


behold a wight horse

by dragginage



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Investigations, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, just me trying to make sense of canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-11-06
Packaged: 2018-10-06 23:29:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,076
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10347012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragginage/pseuds/dragginage
Summary: Six years have passed since Overwatch's headquarters were destroyed in a catastrophic explosion. Gabriel Reyes was fingered as the perpetrator, and everyone Jesse McCree had once considered to be family were content to move on and hate the memory of his mentor in peace. McCree, the past still a noose around his neck, skulks around the great expanse of Middle America for years, taking reckless and suicidal mercenary jobs to keep his belly full and brain saturated with liquor. Shortly after the Overwatch recall, a stranger tracks him down, encouraging him to dig into what exactly happened leading up to that terrible day.





	1. Jesse McCree, present day

_And I saw heaven opened  
__And behold, a white horse._  
_And he who was sitting upon it was called Faithful and True._  
_And with justice does he judge and fight._

 **\--** revelations, 19:11

**Jesse McCree, present day**

There was nothing interesting in the newspaper, not in this town of 2,000, all these middle Americans milling about, so removed from the worries of foreign affairs and even domestic disputes, it seemed like a completely different world. McCree had started reading newspapers, almost obsessively, when he joined Blackwatch, just so he could keep up with everyone else at debriefings, in the lunchroom, even on the dropship before they were dropped into hell on earth. He had kept up the habit since leaving, gray paper rustling and getting dotted with raindrops while he sat on a parkbench, some twenty years after he had asked Commander Morrison to see his copy of the journal once he was done with his coffee for the first time.  
  
Words now becoming drooly ink, paper turning to mush in his left hand, McCree turned his attention towards the sky, just clear and blue five minutes ago. Kansas was always indecisive. It’s why McCree hated the place. In New Mexico, Nevada, California, it’d go months without raining, then one day clouds would blossom on the horizon and the air would turn rank with the smell of burning ozone, letting him know it was time to hide out. Here, the devil beat his wife almost all of July, and there he was, hustling to get under cover, round shouldered with his hat pulled down to his brows.

The door swung shut behind him, and he lay his hat down, flipped upside down so he could put his phone and motel key in it. Didn’t keep a wallet on him, there was no point, he had no ID or credit cards.

He had just the one bag of clothes, and in the inner pocket of the only jacket he owned, there were nearly a dozen laminated pictures, a folded over piece of tape on each one. He hung each up, running a steel finger over the faces of his dead family, people he hadn’t spoken to in six years, who didn’t want to talk to him. Probably better off that way.

McCree flopped onto the bed, idly wishing the whirring ceiling fan above him would just crack off the popcorn ceiling and smash his brains into bits. Not have to take any more of these shitty jobs and stay on the run. Some maid would find him tomorrow morning and get that sweet, sweet twenty five million dollars. A smile pulled at the corners of his mouth despite himself, the image of a squat woman with gel crunched hair slicked back into a bun, three kids all school aged, coming home and exclaiming they could leave Kansas behind, “the shithole!”

That had been a fantasy when he was a boy. Another uncle he had never heard of kicked it, and left him, only him though, a fat wad of cash and a home somewhere warm and breezy, where he could sip wine coolers all day on a patio.

The picture of Ilios caught his eye, sunscreen swiped across Morrison’s nose, Jesse, maybe twenty, with Fareeha hoisted up into his arms, showing her off, my baby sister!, even though she was probably too big to be picked up at that point, Ana, broad shouldered and just a little tight lipped, waiting for the picture to be over with.

  
She never wanted to relax towards the end, like she knew they were all living on borrowed time. Sometimes on trips he’d go running with her in the morning, his oversized puppy feet sinking into the sand, her half a mile ahead of him, beckoning him on without even an ounce of strain in her voice.

It was that push that got her killed though, he recalled with a jolt. The memory of Ilios, that warm and breezy paradise, suddenly felt icy, the memory of who took that picture burrowing into a crevice of Jesse’s brain, the way he always smiled back behind the camera when he took the picture, like the pleasure of being there with them was all he needed, damn the photo.

Feeling nice and sullen now, McCree rolled off the bed, and grabbed his motel key, slamming the door behind him, rain be damned. He walked to the bar across the way, the only one in town, wanting a cigarette and not the half a cigar he had left in his room. To get that nice heady sensation when he got his first drag of the day, since he couldn’t smoke on the job, and sometimes the job took days. Maybe some guy looking to get laid would offer him one and light it for him while leaning in too close, thinking “Holy mother of Christ, I’m smooth.”

He could hear the sucking of teeth in his head when he stepped into the bar. In those first few months living in a foreign country, having been brought there mostly against his will, to be doing something so much bigger than him, it got to be too much sometimes, so he would sneak off base, go into a bar, and drink heavily. Then sure enough, always less than two hours into the night, there was Commander Reyes, whose presence sent even the seediest hostel owners and men on “business trips” into the corners like roaches. Looming, he’d suck his teeth, then a thick hand would grab Jesse’s shoulder and lead him out of the bar.

There was never any yelling, something Jesse liked, even begrudgingly at first, about his commander.

“I’m not chicano enough to drink or beat my kids,” he laughed when Jesse had flinched back into his seat once, thinking he was about to get walloped one good time when really all Commander Reyes did was reach for a cd above the flap. The man was so determinedly unflashy, he still had CDs, and Jesse thought stupidly, somebody so old fashioned can't be capable of hurting me, and relaxed a little bit more. But that was the only bit of self hatred Jesse ever saw in him, those scathing comments, disassociating himself from other men like him. Like them.

McCree learned that confidence well, as well as a certain way to be able to shake off any bolster of pride he ever felt at the drop of a hat. Nothing ever went to his head. He learned everything from Gabriel Reyes. How to shave right, how to drive, how to move without being seen. How to kill.

And now, he had just done that. The job was done. He deserved a drink, goddamnit. Nobody here to tell him no. Not any more.

He asked for an Old Style and two fingers of wild turkey, watching himself in the grimy greenish mirror, rusted in all four corners. The bartender said they didn’t have that, was a PBR alright, but in a tone that let McCree know if it wasn't, that was too damn bad. McCree grunted, and cast a glance over his shoulder to scope the place out for people who looked like they could be cops, his brain, slicked up like a bar of soap, pinging around his skull all the time, just quick enough so he couldn't usually get a firm grip on his thoughts, but he at least could always remember that his bounty was the highest in the country. The shoes usually gave them away though. Polished because it was mandatory, and more often than not wearing a scowl, pissed off for no goddamn reason.

Three rounds later he was playing poker with guys who definitely weren’t interested in anything but making money. _Thank the Good Lord,_ McCree thought as slipped a hand into his boot while they checked the nascar race, pulling out an extra king he had swiped while shuffling the cards. The moment he had seen these assholes round the corner, he had dipped his hand into his pocket, fished out a ponytail, and pulled his hair back into it. When they had sat down at the bar with heaves of breath that were phlegmy and full of faux exhaustion, he had tucked a loose strand of hair behind his ear girlishly. Not five minutes passed before they were asking him to play cards, “only ones and fives! nothing to worry about!” all grinnin’ at each other like foxes who just managed to find a dead cat.

These guys always saw the ponytail, the hair tuck, and thought, yeah, no guy like _this_ knows how to play cards.

But his pile was taller than the rest two hours into the game, probably nearing seventy dollars. His five senses had blessed him with the ability to count, smell, find money better than anyone he knew, like rats could smell poison.

“I have such shitty luck usually,” he smiled sheepishly, putting his hand down, a few more dollars sliding towards him while the guys with too much skin hanging off their necks and handlebar mustaches grunted.

“That’s it boys, it’s 3 in the Gee Dee morning. Time to clear out.” The bartender called, polishing a cloudy glass. “Don’t worry about your tabs just now, looks like you’re hurtin’ enough.”

The men all smiled guiltily at one another as they rose, chairs scraping and not a single one of them having the decency to tuck them back in. They filed out slowly, bell jingling six times, McCree counting his money as he too made his way towards the smudged glass door, when a hand on his chest stopped him.

“Nice boots,” the bartender murmured.

_Shit._

McCree tried to look blank, but knew it was no good. The bartender, oily and pallid from all his time in this dingy bar, folded his arms.

“So what? You gonna fight me for fifty fuckin’ dollars?” McCree squared his shoulders, stepped into the guy’s space, too tired to give a good fight, but drunk enough to want one.

“Split it and I won’t go hollerin’ before they’re back in here tomorrow. I know your type- don’t get out of bed before noon. Don’t fuckin know how to work like a real man, y’all don’t,” The man spat at McCree’s feet.

He heard that a lot. Getting busted for riding atop trains, stealing a carton of ice cream from a gas station, making too much racket fucking in a bathroom stall. He remembered Gabriel’s internalized hate, how it was really just a guard, “Can’t hurt me if I already know it myself! I’m in on the joke guys!”

Now McCree was so fucked up, he had developed that "har har, get a load of this guy, and when I say this guy, I mean me," attitude, too. He wanted to ask this scrawny asshole trying to shake him down, so, what was a real man? What _exactly_ makes me a fake man?

Deciding it wasn’t worth it, he shoved some wrinkled bills into the man’s chest, feeling the ribs underneath creak as the guy inhaled that money scent even McCree loved.

Telling himself that he’d wake up by nine ( _“That fucker was right,”_ he thought, he really did never get out of bed before noon. _“But I’d like to see when he got out of bed if all he had left of his family was a few fingers and half a leg. Prick.”_ ) He made his way back to his motel room, boots stomping unnecessarily heavy on the pavement so acidy rainwater splashed up into his beard, so impatient to get in bed and sleep that it took six times for his card to work, but when he made it in, he curled into the only chair in the room, faux red velvet and flat from all its past users, all the buttons missing from the top so he had to lean back to keep the fluff from spilling out.

He stared at a picture of Genji, Fareeha, and him for a long while. Winston had taken it shortly after their move to Swiss HQ, some work party, Genji, body still a work in progress, smirking, Fareeha, smiling sweetly, arms around each of them, McCree, with that awful, barely there goatee, a cocky grin a permanent fixture back then, too. They had gone out that night after all the 'grown ups' had gone to bed, driven into Germany and bought absinthe, Genji and McCree passing the bottle back and forth on their way back into Switzerland. Fareeha had turned around to look at them so many times she got a crick in her neck and even got onto them when they made fun of the stick up their new doctor's ass. She could always be relied on to defend the person getting ganged up on, make you feel not so alone after you fucked up. If the lobby of the various motels he camped out at ever had a computer, he’d check on her, metal hand over the webcam the whole time, typing clumsily with two fingers on his right.

Egypt. Security. No boyfriend, no girlfriend, a small circle of friends, who were also coworkers by the looks of their cleanliness. He wondered if Ana would be radiant with pride, or primed for an argument yet tired looking over the whole thing, like she had gotten when Fareeha had put the contract down on the long linoleum kitchen counter one night without a word.

Clumsy strums of a guitar shook him out of his train of thought.

No.

A single strum of a Johnny Cash song, anything acoustic and just twangy enough made his ears shriek, mind get loud with white noise. He locked himself in the bathroom, phone in hand, and dialed, telling himself it was because he was drunk, pushing the real reason, that loneliness, down into the pits of his stomach.

She picked up on the second to last ring, sounding hassled.

“It’s goddamn two in the morning, what could possibly be so important?” She barked into the phone. So she was either drunk or exhausted, maybe both, enough to not have checked the caller ID.

“Heeyyy,” he drawled out, hoping she’d recognize his voice. A beat, two-

“Jesse?” her southern accent a little flatter than he always anticipated it to be.

“Mom,” he answered.

“Well fuck me sideways,” he grimaced at the expression and started looking around the bathroom for something to distract himself with. “You out here?”

That was always her first question. He always wondered if he said yes, if she'd phone the police next, collect her own son's bounty.

“Nah, not far though.” He half lied. It was all flat and worthless anyway, what was a ten hours drive?

“You gonna swing by and see your momma? I’ve been missing you something fierce these last few weeks. You have a good birthday?”

His birthday had been seven months ago.

“Swell. Had a few friends over, nothing big,” he pressed his shoulder to his ear to hold the phone while he inspected the shower. Not the dirtiest he had ever seen.

“Friends huh? Find you a wife yet?”

He could see his mom, her flat nose taking big sniffs and baby hands holding the phone, sleeping underneath her toile comforter, the one she had bought nearly thirty years ago from Alabama's Largest Flea Market! scratching at her hairy chin, a half lit cigarette still in the ashtray, always threatening to consume their shitty little cabin.  The one she had seen on the side of the road on their trip, to move from Alabama to New Mexico. It was a mostly plastic modular home, but McCree’s daddy had marched into the place and bought the house on the spot with the cash he had inherited from a great uncle Jesse had never heard of, then had a truck driver follow them to the plot of land they had also been given near the border of Texas. His dad never got over it, that cabin, felt embarrassed they were the only idiots in the midwest with a log cabin, and would pop his wife on the back of the head if he was feeling particularly bad tempered, berate her about her shitty taste.

“Mmm,” was all he could muster, not wanting to get into their annual argument. He heard his mom light a cigarette on the other end, take a drink of something lukewarm by her bedstand.

“I know what we did wasn’t right by you, but, it was for your best int’rest. Look atcha, you happy right now?”

He said nothing.

“That’s what I thought. Why don’t you quit this hero shit and come home? Your daddy’s been gone about a year. No better time. I won’t push you or nothing, even though I know this sweet thing, already got a baby-”

“Qu-it,” he said it in two syllables, accent going honeyed the longer he stayed on the phone.

“I’m looking out for you, like any good mother would. You always were ungrateful,” the meanness drawing out of her like venom.

He still said nothing.

“You’re living in the past. What kinda son doesn’t come see his momma every now and then? That’s all I’m asking. I’m willin to let bygones, but you’re still hung up on _that man,_ ” she hissed those last words. “He never did wrong by you, dragging you off to war better than getting raised right? That it? I know goddamn well he didn’t raise you. Probably pretended he did, sick fuck. Who knows what kinda sick things he did to you, before he killed all those people. That your hero?”

He threw the phone with the metal arm, cracking the tile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to make it abundantly clear that nothing sexual happened between Gabe/Jesse at any point, Jesse's mom is just a bad person who thinks any man caring for somebody other than their own child is inherently sexual. And also, this is my first fic EVER so like,, go easy on me :D  
> There will be a lot of back and forth, past and present chapters in this, too, just an fyi. Thank you for reading :)


	2. Gabriel Reyes, 2056

**Gabriel Reyes, 2056**   
  
  
“This shit is miserable,” Gabriel said, rolling up his pant legs up, hat now in his back pocket.   
  
“Mmph,” was the only response he got from this kid. Been in the program two years, and he still never remembered it was either sir, or commander. That didn’t really bug him so much, but Malcolm couldn’t be bothered with regular manners. Please and thank you at meals. They had ate at a diner a day out and he hadn’t even left a fucking tip, forcing Gabe to double back, muttering something about his wallet, and smack another two dollars on the table.   
  
Blackwatch. It made him think of tightly packed streets and dark flimsy clubs, purple fluorescents shining down on the villain’s face, Bam! There he was! Skulls cracked, job over!   
  
Instead, it was New Mexico in July. Having stripped off his jacket and hat, pants folded half way up his calves, leaving only an undershirt beneath his bulletproof vest, he looked more like a stripper dressed as a cop. Dust clung to his skin like stubble, and right then and there he decided he fucking hated the southwest. California was a land all to its own, just like Gibraltar. Slices of heaven on Earth.   
  
“We can split up, if you want,” Malcolm said, getting twitchy from standing still for too long, inching away from the scorpion that had been making its way toward them the last few minutes. Gabe knew it was a bad idea, they were supposed to be in, be out, the amount of parts to be counted for were too much for one man to sort through on his own.   
  
But it also meant more ground was being covered in less time, and he wanted to get the fuck back to the helicopter parked thirty miles away (another fun trek to be had) swoop in, grab the stuff, and be out of here.   
  
“That’s fine. Be back here at 1100 hours. Got it?” He shook Malcolm’s shoulder, and got a stiff nod of assent. Reyes had barely gotten half a block away when he heard that PING! break the sound barrier, narrow and even satisfying to hear, granted it was somebody on your side, but- he knew it wasn’t. Taking a deep gulp of air, willing whoever had shot to not have heat maps on their crappy little guns, he peaked around a pillar of red clay, Malcolm’s head shrouded in crimson on the simmering pavement, his blood getting baked into the scalding asphalt. A second ping went whirring by Gabe’s head at the exact moment he realized he needed to move, to get backup.   
  
Fucking Blackwatch. A flash of Strike Commander Morrison sitting behind a desk somewhere, grumbling about the lombar of the chair swirled around his brain. Gabe was the planner, the meticulous Type A one. Jack couldn’t even keep up with matching socks most days of the week, but there was Gabriel Reyes, with color coded meal plans and wrote down every idea that came into his head, divided into binders. New workouts, things to buy for Fareeha’s birthday, ways to cut expenses within Overwatch, conflict resolution, recruitment ideas, public ad campaigns. All of his life was a plan, and the rug had been pulled out underneath him when Jack was promoted instead. All alone in his room, March wind howling down into his rickety fireplace, Reyes had thrown his “promotion vacation” binder into a baby fire he had started with newspaper and a single starter log, feeling reckless, willing it to burn this whole place down. They had met with a compromise to ‘reward’ the original leader of Overwatch, though. He would be commander of Blackwatch. A secret job, leaving Ana to be the real second in command. That he could understand, her standing up on various podiums, that warm husky voice seeming consoling when even delivering the most devastating of news.   
  
He had run a few miles when the tings of shrapnel and bits of rock getting shot up into the backs of his ankles finally ceased. His shoulders rose up and down rhythmically for a minute, trying to catch his breath. Ana was the one with stamina, those crack of dawn runs every day, he was the one with strength, curling weights at 2 am when nobody was around to bother him or flip the channels.   
  
There was a bar up ahead. He could at least duck out behind a counter while he waited for pick up, throw some vodka on his bleeding ankles, have a glass of water to soothe his sandpaper dry throat.   
  
He realized at the door it was, in fact, a diner and not a bar.   
  
The bell jingled when he stepped in. Posters plastered the walls, cheeky expressions like “Free drinks tomorrow!” and “I only go fishing on days that end in y.” He peeled back a poster of an omnic frying up eggs, almost thinking it could be funny to pin it to Jack’s kitchen wall, when a rushed scratch of metal on plastic made him start.   
  
He peaked his head around the corner, a boy no older than twenty sat at the bar alone, shovelling toast and runny eggs into his mouth, totally deaf to the door being opened. Deadlock, since the winged skull bandana that was supposed to cover the lower half of his face was pulled down round his neck so he could eat.   
  
Gabe cocked his gun, and the kid took a deep inhale, more as if he were full from his shitty lunch, than nervous he had a gun pointed at him.   
  
“Didn’t get the password before you busted in here?” His voice was low for somebody so round shouldered and pinched. He seemed more like the type to shovel shit at a rodeo rather than hustle with the most dangerous criminals in the southwest.   
  
“Nah, I don’t think I need a password to get a cup of water,” Gabe replied, gun still pointed at the side of the gang member’s head, slowing sidestepping his way behind the bar, heart hammering, ears buzzing.   
  
“Well, here you do, otherwise, I’m s’posed to shoot you,” He picked up his head now, and Gabe got a good look at him.   
  
Peaky was the only way to describe him. He had the look of a person who had been pulled like taffy, crooked glasses slipping down the end of a sweaty nose and facial hair that had never been properly shaved, maybe picked at with a pair of scissors, his hair greasy and lank underneath a ratty ball cap.   
  
“And yet,” Gabe said, putting his gun down on the bar, grabbing a finger smudged cup, and filling it to the brim.   
  
“You a cop?” The boy inquired, sitting back in his chair to get a bit of distance between him and the gun, or maybe him and Gabe.   
  
“Do I look like a cop?” Gabe said through gritted teeth before finishing his water greedily, smacking it down like a man on a Friday who had finished another week of work might slam down a shot of whiskey. Feeling it would be in the spirit of things, he snaked the soda hose over the table and held it over the boy’s cup, waiting for an answer, the kid's lips pulling in and patchy blotches of color creeping up his neck.   
  
“Fruit punch,” he muttered, and Gabe, unable to help himself, actually laughed. A big bark, head tilted back, but going ahead and pouring fluorescent red liquid into the cup until it was full to the brim.   
  
“I coulda killed you just then,” the boy fired up, hands gripping the edge of the bar like he was about to spring up, ready to fight.   
  
He didn’t respond to this for a beat, waiting for the kid to let his hands go slack again and take a drink before asking-   
  
“What’s your name, kid?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't hate Jack, but I'm not absolutely crazy about him either. I think his dad persona has been blown way out of proportion, leaving Gabe to be the Gruff Scary Latino, which I actually hate, so this is me amending that in my own little corner of fanon.


	3. Jesse McCree, present day

**Jesse McCree, present day**

The question always loomed in the back of his mind.

_ Do they think about me as much as I think about them? _

Sometimes, if the hangover was shitty enough, he’d remind himself, everyone but Fareeha and Genji were dead. Then that voice, always, always, would whisper--

_ You know they keep in touch. And I know they’re happy you’ve left them alone. You’re the one who left first, right? So what do you care? _

That was all he heard in his room that night, questions like that floating above him every time the window unit air conditioner kicked over, tepid sweat sticking to the back of his knees, and when sunlight finally crested through the crevice of his heavy, smoke stained curtains, he got out of bed and peeled off the pictures from his wall. It was time to go.

With only $27.48 before he could beg somebody to cash this check (he’d fucking told them, half a dozen times at least- CASH ONLY), he’d have to sleep on a bench somewhere if nobody felt like being generous today. He sulked around behind a gas station dumpster like a cat who hadn’t been fed in a few days, waiting for somebody to offer him a cup of coffee, a half eaten hot dog, a bag of almonds. Nice, dimpled, Christian-y looking women used to say a short little prayer for him, back ten years ago, whenever they bought him something. But nobody felt much sympathy for a man nearing his 40’s who couldn’t even scrounge up a few quarters for a bag of chips, so finally, Jesse let the door chime behind him, air conditioning whisking the sweat off his face so quickly the hair on his arms stood up on end.

He put the phone on the bright blue counter, hoping the tax wouldn’t be so much that he could get a single, spongy ham sandwich, marked “half off after 5pm!” and it was 5:03.

“Don’t s’pose you could do me a solid and cash this without an ID,” he leaned in, voice hardly more than a whisper. The spotty teen behind the counter eyed the check, then scanned the rest of the store for other customers before replying-

“Give me four hundred of it and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

Jesse wanted to laugh. Most people demanded ten percent, fifteen even, but this kid only wanted a computer or something, coming up with such a specific, meager number.

“Sounds fair to me,” Jesse shrugged.

Belly brimmed with  water-condensed bread, he shimmied up onto the train stopped half a mile away with ease, his metal arm being actually good for something now and then. The ride was easy, the air going  _ shw-shw-shw-shw _ like a single window was open in a car going down the highway.

Feeling indulgent with the wad of crisp cash bouncing up against his thigh, he slid down the side of the train once the tops of all those tow heads started to shuffle off the platform. Blonde hair and pastel clothing, the tell tale sign of upper middle class America.

Once in town, he could smell poorly seasoned meat being charred by huddles of men in pleated shorts and gingham button ups.

Jack Morrison type of men, men who stayed so clammed up all of their lives it bordered on hostility. Just once, him and Genji had stuck a piece of bologna to the Commander’s car, letting it bake in the Spanish sun for hours until Jack had peeled it off, taking the car’s paint with it, face pink and lips pulled tight around his teeth.

The rubber band snapped.

Morrison grabbed the top of the window he had left cracked so the car wouldn’t get too hot, and tore it clean off, glass piling at his feet- not even registering the jagged pieces still stuck in the crevices where his fingers and palm met- he was so belligerently furious. Reinhardt drove him to the hospital, even his usual boom of small talk muted. Ana had pulled Jesse by the ear back into his room, scolding him, lecturing him about “the weight on Jack’s shoulders” for an hour.

The memory brought no pang of nostalgia, something McCree reckoned he could fix with two or three or ten bourbons.

This hotel was nicer than the usual ones he skulked around a week at a time. His arm lay feebly by the bed while he took his time in the shower, keeping his left eye closed, willing himself to not to so much as glance at his stump of an arm while he let the hot water work the knots out of his neck. The pain that had been shooting hot through his biceps up into his shoulder from the wind whipping up under his sarape only slightly soothed. Looking for soap, he caught a good look at the crook where his elbow had once been, now just a flabby piece of skin hanging off the bone.

_ A single slab of concrete, keeping him pinned for hours, tears going dry on his face, snow burying his legs while he wait to die. _

The water no longer comforting, all he wanted to do was crawl under the covers for hours, knees to chest, wait for everything to go silent.

Towel wrapped around his waist, arm snapped back on, phone in his right hand, he positioned himself at the edge of his bed, ready to stand and pace if anyone picked up. He fussed around in his coat pocket until he found the number he had scribbled down on the way out of the door this morning from the motel’s lobby. Here he was, in another hotel less than twelve hours later. It seemed he bounced off the walls wherever he went, jobs catapulting him forward to the next place, then the next, then the next. Slam him into a wall and you’d hear a cheerful  _ ping! _ Like you had won something at the carnival.

“Hello?” Genji’s voice came, melodic as always.

McCree, instead of a hello, took a long, crackly draw from his cigar that had been waiting for him in the hotel’s only ashtray. “ _ We only have one smoking room, sir!”  _ A bubbly college aged girl had told him at check in. Another train was rolling into town now, and Jesse bounced on the balls of his feet to the beat of it thunking along the tracks.

“Is someone there?” Genji asked, no trace of impatience in his tone. Odd. In the days of their friendship, Genji had been polite, but only just. Get him behind closed doors and he was all closed fists and excessively rolled eyes.

“Just me,” McCree finally said.

On the other end, there was no humid huff of exasperation that Jesse was used to when he called people from the past.

“Jesse.. It’s good to hear from you-” It was half sincere.

“Well, I was hopin’, if you don’t mind, that is… Hell, don’t even know if you got it,” McCree started.

“--But now isn’t really a good time, I have only now touched down from a flight that lasted too long, I am in the car with my brother, traffic is really awful, we had plans for dinner and now those are probably ruined,” he listed off in one breath, like he could sneak the ‘Can You Find The Difference?’ right under Jesse’s nose.

“Uh-” was all McCree could manage, then after a thick pause, his falsetto started. “That’s great! You give him a big ole hello from me! Won’t keep you, but you’d be saving me a whole lotta hassle if you could lend me Angela’s number. Been meaning to phone her, my damn arm’s been acting up.” Two lies right off the tongue, just like that. It was easy to slip back into the old ways.

“Oh? Is everything alright?” That had pulled Genji in a little more, making McCree regret the fib.

“Ahh shit, everything’s fine. Probably just needs a little motor oil. I’m sure you know what-” He stopped himself, but Genji had finished the sentence in his own head, and when he spoke again, McCree finally heard a bit of his (once) best friend’s temper come bubbling to the surface.

“Yeah. I’ll send it. This number will do?”

“Sure will.”

“Great.”

_ Click _ _. _

He dressed while he waited for the number, finger combed his hair and beard, and had a single boot on when his phone buzzed. An image of Genji bad mouthing him for a good five minutes, hands tight on the wheel while he zoomed in and out of bumper to bumper traffic before he tossed the phone to Hanzo, asking him to text McCree the number.

“Dr. Ziegler’s office,” came Angela’s voice, reedy with exhaustion. No secretary to take her calls? Everything was quiet behind her, no rumble of a hospital or slews of people passing her on the streets while she made her way to meet up with friends for a Friday night dinner. They were both alone. It should have made him feel sorry for her, but it didn't.

“Is this Dr. Ziegler?” he asked, already knowing it was, and took another drag of his cigar.

“Yes, and who is this?” she replied, but her voice had gone stiff, like she was forgetting to breathe.

“Jesse McCree.” More formal than it should have been, but that’s how he had always interacted with her. They were the same age, him actually five months older, but he always felt pushed into the corner when Germany’s Youngest Doctor came to Christmas parties, was invited to U.N conferences, her all shiny and chagrined over the crowds of people who fawned over her, McCree tinny and at least twenty-five percent obnoxious at all times.

“Oh. Is there a reason for the call?”

That was the response he was used to.

“Actually yeah. I want to know,” he was forgetting to breathe now, so his words were coming out all jumbled up, his brain forgetting to hit the space bar between his words. 

“I-need-to-know-what-happened-to-Gabe. I-gotta-know. I-know-you-know.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No. Tell me what happened. It was an explosion. What happened to the rest of him? Why didn’t his mother get to bury him? It killed her, for Christ’s sake, not being able to bury her baby. Her only child. How do you sleep at night?” The rage was displaced, he knew that, but it didn’t stop him from digging into her.

“Jesse, you hadn’t spoken to Gabriel in almost a year,” Angela turned waspish in an instant, dropping the doctor tone. “So don’t you dare act like you were owed anything.”

“What? So just ‘cause your parents kicked the bucket when y’all were on good terms we all gotta follow your goddamn rules?” His head was swimming at this point. "And you know goddamn well that ain't what this is about. You know-"

“-Don’t do this, don’t bring this up after all this-”

“Tell me what happened to him. You had Jack’s body if you needed to run your bullshit tests for the fuckin’ UN.” He muttered it quickly, then tutted. “More loyalty to the shit hooks that got us in all this mess than to your own people.”

“Got us in this mess? I’m fine! I’m fine with my choices. How  _ dare _ you speak to  _ me _ about loyalty, Jesse McCree. I’m fine with my choices,” She was close to tears now, voice had gone humid on the other end of the line.

“Are- you- really?” Each word punctuated.

“Yes. I’m sorry you’re not. It’s something to consider, next time.”

“Next time what? Next time my family-” He stopped, choked on the dryness in his throat.

It was a pastime for McCree, wondering if they had all lied to him. If Gabe’s body had really been crushed so badly under the rubble that it looked more like gum under a shoe than a person, only a few fingers left poking out from beneath a heavy desk. Or if they took him, away, piece by piece, dissecting his lungs and scraping away skin cells like a frog sliced down the middle in biology class, all humanity lost, only interested in the effects of a person pumped full of chemicals for the sake of making a human weapon.

Angela had hung up by the time he snapped back into the present, his lonely hotel room, one boot still lying lazily across the mossy berber carpet.

A half hour later, McCree was four drinks deep at the hotel’s bar.

“What’s your drink?” A twangy Texan accent asked in McCree’s left ear, one eye only partially open so the stranger was just a bleary blue outline.

The man made himself comfortable on the stool beside him, rocking back and forth until he found the right spot on the ruby red pleather to rest a haunch.

Jesse slumped his face into his metal hand, baby fat piling high onto his cheeks, mumbling, “Whiskey. Neat” like he was embarrassed by this old song and dance.

Naturally, his neighbor copied the motion, and McCree finally glanced over at him.

Everything about him rubbed Jesse the wrong way, from his doe eyed baby blues to his overplumped hammish skin. McCree’s eyes darted towards the man’s ring finger. Sure enough, there was a little indent of white around the summer scorned pink. Unsurprising.

Again, he thought of Jack, how he would have been the type of man to slide off his ring into the depths of his pockets. Maybe not to get laid, but from sheer embarrassment that somebody cared enough about him to marry him.

Almost two years into Blackwatch, Jesse had been poking around Gabe’s house while Reyes worked on their Halloween costumes.

All of their housing was the exact same, save for the people who lived on base with their families. Just a single room and bathroom, with a partition dividing the kitchen and dining room from the rest of the house. The chug of the sewing machine was loud enough for Jesse to rifle through drawers without being heard.

He didn’t intend to steal anything, really, only wanted something to blackmail his commander with next time Gabe chastised him for spilling soda all over the driver’s seat or being last to finish the mile.

Instead, he found a little velvet box, and popped it open without hesitation. A plain gold band. No rock of any sort on top.

It couldn’t be for Jack, could it? Ana? Somebody Jesse had never even met? Had it been a relative’s, and Gabe was just holding onto it until he met the right person?

The sewing machine had stopped, and McCree tossed the box back into the top drawer, faking innocence, Reyes too focussed on making sure their costumes looked alright (“Coño! You’d be stressed too if you had been working on this for the last six weeks only for you to tell me last minute that the holster is for a crossbow and not a gun!”) to notice the guilty expression.

For weeks Jesse watched his interactions with everyone, looking for a lingering touch, a dreamy sigh when that special someone turned away. But all he got was Reyes, working on his Halloween costume, doing paperwork, making a piñata in the shape of a bat. Jesse finding some relief in the normalcy.  _ Good, I don’t want a step-parent. _ The thought had hit him like a jolt even two decades later.

“I have to go,” McCree said, slinging back his whiskey in one gulp, pushing back from the bar and bustling through the doors back into the lobby’s bright light without a backwards glance at the man he had left behind.

He slammed his door behind him, arms shaky, palms flat on the wood, willing himself to breathe. Everything had the color sucked out of it, his eardrums the size of pins, a tiny “eeeee” getting through them, but other than that, silence. Breathe. Breathe. Right when the world had started to feel not so off kilter, a voice spoke behind him.

“This hotel- a little bit nicer than usual. Not that I’m complaining.”

 


	4. Ana Amari, January 1, 2058

**Ana Amari, January 1, 2058**

 

Late again. And over the holidays. They didn’t celebrate Christmas, sure, but Gabe always found an excuse to get Fareeha something. “It was on sale, Ana!” “I saw it while grocery shopping and knew somebody who’d love it.”

At least one of them didn’t always let her down.

She banished the thought.  _ “He’s not her father,” _ she told herself, pissed the idea had even slithered into her brain.

Jack, Gabe, Fareeha, and Jesse were the only ones left in the rec room, confetti littering the floor, balloons already sagging like they too were exhausted from the festivities. All four of them were asleep, Gabe with an arm draped across the couch, Jack’s feet splayed wide on the coffee table, Fareeha leaning into Gabe, mouth open and hair ruffed from them all brushing the top of her head a dozen times over, Jesse pulled into the corner of the couch, one arm propped up on the end table to keep his head upright.

She fished her camera out of the duffle bag slung round her shoulders, the tiny click! Making her worry they would wake up, but they didn’t even stir.

Ana settled herself into a spare arm chair, letting the ab core blaster infomercial lull her to sleep.

That week, already fourteen years ago, was of course what she dreamt about. All those people, thickset like pitbulls and tossing their heads round like showhorses. The UN had a convention, for reasons unknown, to gather all the people across the world they had drafted into their respective country’s Super Soldier Program. Ana listened to men ask sheepishly to one another if they had had any  _ issues _ since starting the weekly injections, women taking the moments of leisure to pretty themselves up, wide shoulders pulling on the sleeves of their dresses.

All her friends had gone off to the beach every night this week, flinging themselves into the still cold ocean with the drunk gleefulness of teenagers. Hell, most of them were barely out of high school anyway. Things were winding down now, after a day of buffet meals with strangers and listening to conference speakers in suits threatening to split tell them why they were all here, all those big and brawny super soldiers were sneaking off into the bushes with weed they had bought off their waiters, stumbling into cabs, and sucking down cigarettes they had never even smoked before they left for training with the efficiency of a pack-a-dayer.

String lights glimmered through slots crisscrossing the lanai, and still, Ana remembered thinking how romantic it felt, her all alone in a sweat-slicked plastic chair, her leather bomber pulled up around her shoulders to shield her from the breeze, the stench of citronella clinging to every inch of her bare skin.

She sipped the bitter water of a coconut through a straw, the whole act of ordering one feeling ridiculous and kitschy. Still, it was good, and since they weren’t allowed drinks besides water and protein shakes back at training, she wasn’t complaining.

And there he was, the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome, lingering awkwardly by the open cooler, debating whether or not he’d lose that cool guy facade if carried around a coconut with a curly straw coming out the top.

“Live a little, it won’t kill you!” She called from her chair. He didn’t even flinch, just stared at the cool air billowing up into the balmy May sky.

“Mmmm, I don’t know. It might.” His voice was little more than a hum of thunder, warm and strangely distant, accent flatter than all those cornfields she had heard another American boasting about.

“I’m drinking one. Am I any less cool?” She leaned back a little, trying to give herself a good angle for him to assess her at. His head lolled towards her, his lips finally curling into a feline smile.

He mentioned the jacket when he sat down, and it was her turn to tease, his black hoodie zipped almost all the way up and his black jeans rolled halfway up his calves, revealing a few inches of brown, tree trunk muscles.

Gabriel (a nice name, Ana thought) was from L.A, so if it dropped below eighty, it was cold. She laughed. She felt the same way. And this humidity? She missed the sand whipping up into her hair, grains landing on her scalp and scrubbing her hands through them when she washed her hair, chunky almost-pebbles streamlining down the drain.

He was more of a bath guy, he informed her. A mental image of him, all warm and sleek muscle sprawled out in a tub, the mop of hair on top of his head dripping sudsy water into his eyes flashed in her mind, and her mouth actually got dry. The look on her face must have told him something, because he sat back, sipping his coconut in silence for a few minutes, smirking to himself.

His energy was tense, a leather belt pulled tight, waiting to snap through the air, but he seemed to be trying to play it cool. She decided she liked that, because she was surrounded by guys day in and day out who just loved to yell, rough house, get pissed if somebody gave them a look that didn’t quite sit right with them. Ana prompted him to talk a little more, and it seemed to work. He talked about how awful their base was, it was three hours to get to a decent place to eat, was the one in Egypt any better? And how he had never actually been to Europe before, how he was mad they couldn’t leave the conference center, because it was a thin chance he’d ever be in Italy again, and it was perfect during the day, did she like it? Had she ever been? Oh, she was twenty seven? And he gripped his now empty coconut with two hands at this, the first time he had looked anything other than cool. Four years wasn’t anything, she reminded herself, getting miles and miles ahead of where they were, sitting together in a now mostly deserted patio.

When the waiters started flipping up the chairs onto the tables, they took the signal that it was finally time to go. Ana not even realizing the last few scragglers and introverts had cleared out hours ago, yet she still wasn’t ready to say goodnight to this guy.

“Want to go off campus? Get something to eat?” There was that glint in her eye, and if he looked he could probably see the glimmer of truth as to why she was one of the oldest ones here.

Not that she had been awful, per se. Maybe… Lazy, but not a bad kid. It took her twenty four years to stop insisting that she “operated on a different schedule” than the rest of the world and just go and find something to do other than work at the mall. So she had joined the military. And she was good at it. All of it. Being a leader, handling a gun, maintaining wary optimism. A perfect soldier. It felt embarrassing sometimes, hearing all these career kids talk about their community service in high school, the convention speakers bringing up orphans who had been insisting that they were going to join since a serviceman had swooped them up out from a drone strike, when the most danger she had ever been in was rolling her car on the freeway once because there had been a spider on the steering wheel.

She ran a finger over the tattoo she had gotten in the weeks following the accident and shortly before enlisting.

His fingertips brushed over her tattoo that night, leaving trails of warmth wherever he touched her, his catty smile gone now, replaced with such a serious expression she had to keep asking if he was okay, if he was having a good time, did he want to go? And finally he sat up on her bed, shirtless and huffy, a hand on each of her thighs, his mustache actually flaring now.

“I’m just concentrating.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Savoring- Savoring is a better way to put it,” Ana laughed at that, and he smiled differently this time, eyes squinted shut, grin going from ear to ear.

He had climbed down the balcony of her hotel a few hours later, asking her to wait for him with a coconut for him, same place, same time tomorrow.

It was almost ten when she realized that he wasn’t going to show. Back in high school, she had always been too eager. Since entering her twenties, she had managed to dial it back, but now she had gone and spread her legs for a man who couldn’t even be bothered by the niceties of a single weekend.

Mopiness gripped her tight, vision starting to turn fuzzy in her peripherals, until her child brain reasoned that if he was off sleeping with some other dumb girl, she’d get back at him, even though she knew, she _ knew _ he didn’t care.

Ron was his name, but he went by Ronnie when he was a boy. He was good looking in a way that would last, maybe even get better over time, but he wore shorts that were too tight and flip-flops. Even in the walk to the hotel, she caught little glimmers of tinsly silver hair against his long sleek raven hair. Not a soldier, but the youngest Canadian ambassador to date! He bragged the whole night, about the school he went to, about the house that was under contract back home, about how good his cock must feel, and Ana had to suppress and eyeroll. What an asshole.

With his shoes in her hand, she ushered him out the door, told him she was too tired to talk much more, and tomorrow she had to be up by five, which was half true. She got up that early every morning to run, but it wasn’t a requirement. Except now. Now it was, if only if it was to get him to leave.

Five weeks later, a doctor with deep set eyes told her she was pregnant.

If the father was another member of the Super Soldier program, it meant that she had to keep the pregnancy a secret, that she would be “sent home” while they studied her. Fortunately, they had DNA of every member of the program, and there was no need for all of the ‘drama’ of a traditional paternity test. Instead, she had UN members tut-tutting that Canada’s youngest ambassador had gotten mixed up into all of this while Ronnie spluttered, all the color drained from his boyishly handsome face.

There wasn’t anything to regret though. Fareeha had been the greatest gift to her, words would never be able to describe the joy one person could bring Ana. The fulfilment she had lacked her whole life suddenly had an answer the day Fareeha had been born. Ana, despite the hiccup early on, had been given the second best spot within Overwatch, the real reason behind their chemically laced veins finally coming to light.

Fareeha was barely two years old, waddling around their new home still smelling of paint and plastic furniture, when their doorbell rang.

Fresh ocean air blasted through the front doors, and there he was, head now shaved, but otherwise the exact same, stretching out his arm to clap her on the shoulder once like they were old gym buddies, Ana’s arms pinned to her side. She could hold a grudge.

“How have you been?” He asked, nodding towards the sound of toddler talk from a room over, and pulled up a chair, an elbow on each knee, ready for a good story. Before Ana could even call her off, Fareeha was bobbing around his feet, and he scooped her up and began bouncing her, almost impatiently, on his knee, eyes still puppy round in anticipation.

“You’re not her dad,” she blurted. He took a deep inhale, raised an eyebrow, then simply said “I know that!” with a wave of the hand.

“You ditched me,” she said, pulling up the other flimsy chair, arms folded under her armpits like a child who’d been told no dessert.

“Ah. Ha, didn’t think you would remember that- I have a really good excuse, actually. I still remember, too. That counts for something, right?” He gave her the cat smile, whiskers fluffling over his grin.

“So? Let’s hear  _ your _ story then, if it’s so good.” She weaved her head like a snake, and just as he had taken another deep inhale-

“Gaaaaabe? I still don’t have your immunization records!” A man’s demanding voice barked from outside the door, sounding more like a mother searching for a lost child than a superior givings orders.

“Mmmm, well, there’s my excuse,” and without so much as a ‘sorry to burst in on you, nice to meet your daughter, sorry to leave so suddenly,’ he braced both his hands onto the armrests and propelled himself off the chair and shot out through the door to his excuse.

Jack Morrison. An asshole if she ever met one.

Somebody she guessed who was fawned over in high school for being extremely ordinary looking and somewhat well groomed in a crowd of long-jawed and frizzy haired teenage boys who stank of moldy towels and cheap hairgel, yet his confidence seemed shaky in the ‘real world.’

He always had to be the biggest man in a crowd, never wanting to attend formal dinners or go on co-op missions, preferring to shine alone so he could exaggerate all the finer points of how the “average folk” lived. She had looked up Bloomington, Indiana, the place he mentioned he had grown up, describing it as quaint farmland, boringly wholesome, and “Truly American!” Sure, it was nothing to write home about, but it was then that she had realized he was full of shit.

There was that, and the fact that she was, (apparently, despite making no indication whatsoever that she was interested in Blackwatch’s leader) a threat to him and Gabe’s- whatever it was. He curled around Gabe like a cat every time she so much as delivered paperwork to Jack’s shiny, catalog furniture-filled office, sweat beading at his corn blonde hairline.

At first, she had tried small talk “You look nice today Jack!” and “Did you try any of those crab stuffed mushrooms at the conference? I’ve been trying to figure out how to recreate them!” to smooth things over with him, but he bristled, hands balling into fists, so she had moved onto awkward, overly enthusiastic, inappropriate humor. “You and Gabe should watch Fareeha sometime, Mama Bear needs a hot date!” or “Maybe you and I could go get a drink sometime? Swap stories?” (wink-wink, nod-nod) which had cost her a meeting with HR.

So she had slunk back into hanging around the lesser folks within Overwatch, people Jack would cut at the first chance if he could, her and Reinhardt watching the same cartoon movies with Fareeha four weekends in a row, him showing her how to cut wood with an axe for her two by two fireplace.

When Fareeha had turned six, every first of June, she was shipped off to spend twelve devastatingly long weeks with her father halfway across the world. Ana would project the blues onto anyone who came into her path, and all through Gibraltar's summer, not even Jack Morrison talked down to her.

The three of them had been sent out onto a mission, long haul, the end of the line type of mission that July, Ana’s panicked brain shouting the whole time in the hangar bay-

_ ‘What if you don’t make it back?’ _

Jack didn’t help, his pacing back and forth even though they were supposed to be strapped in, nor did Gabe, the beads of his rosaries making a  _ “tck-tck-tck” _ noise every time he slid one against his nails.

“Fareeha’s going to see on the news tonight that her mom is the world’s biggest goddamn hero.” Gabe said, without even picking his head up. She felt the slightest shot of encouragement that he had been thinking of her, too. Even Jack managed to smile, tight lipped and not even close to being genuine, but still, it was more than she usually got out of him.

Ten gruelling days of battling bastion units and bullets raining down upon them like spring storms, and finally, finally,  _ finally _ , when Ana had thought things had come to an end, when Jack had been standing, just standing, hands on his waist, looking around the great wasteland of the battlefield, omnics littered like cans on the side of a highway, a grenade landed just a stone’s throw from his feet. In an instant, she forgot about everything else, dashed forward, wrapped her arms around his waist in a bear hug motion, and slung Jack back as far as she could.

It cost her a leg and an eye. The ones she got in turn were better, and it was still July, so maybe she could be out of the hospital by the first of September to pick up her daughter without a great ugly scar over half her face, but it was three weeks spent in the hospital, doing a whole lot of nothing.

The smell of the hospital, stale and fleshy, poorly masked by disinfectants was worse than missing a leg. Her head felt heavy on her neck, lulling around while she tried to focus on anything other than everything that had happened. The good and the bad.

The omnic crisis was over. Or so they said. Now what? What was left to do?

As it turned out, a lot. She would be sent to Egypt once a year to manage the situation there, as well as keep an eye on the station Overwatch was currently trying to set up. Jack would travel to supervise the construction over a Swiss base they were to move to in a few years time, which left Gabe to handle the messy work. Undercover, under the table, unchecked work with Blackwatch. Her mind had just started to wander when-

Jack let himself in without knocking, and pulled up a chair.

“You doing alright?” He asked, eyes on the television, ladies with glittery cheeks exclaiming “No! My husband just can’t be an omnic!” Before turning to look at her.

“Just me, Beverly, and Leah hanging out,” Ana replied, waving the remote at the tv before clicking it off. He gave her another begrudging smile, but the fake politeness turned her brain hot and red.

“What exactly is it that you want? I know you didn’t come all this way to make small talk,” Ana said, wishing she could get up and go.

“Well, thank you, for starters.” He raised an eyebrow, arms folding under his armpits, looking uncomfortable and awkward in jeans and a polo, an overgrown schoolboy being forced to show some manners.

“Oh. You’re welcome… I’m sure you would have done the same for me. I just didn’t want to become Commander. I like my position right now just fine,” she said, counting out each and every one of her split ends for a few moments while they sat together in thick silence.

They pretended to listen in on the nurses chattering like hens right outside of the open door, the words washing over them like spring mist.

“Gabe’s been calling Fareeha every day. Letting her know how you’re doing, telling her dad that you’re fine and all that.” Jack said, eyes now darting around while color flooded his already summer pink skin.

“That’s sweet of him. Tell him I said thank you,” she nodded her head.

“He sure thinks a lot of her.”

“What’s not to think?” Her defenses sprang up.

“That’s not what I meant. I just mean… I don’t know. He likes spending time with the two of you, but you always seem to find a way to ditch him?” He was positively buzzing with anxiety now.

“Kinda hard when you’re always backpacking him,” Ana shot back, forgetting for an instant that he was her superior, then squeezing her eyes shut, waiting for the blow, but none came.

“I guess. You two really seem- you really get along. There’s a lot of back and forth between Gabe and I. Not to say things are bad, but- neither of us really need to fill that silence. I feel like we end up talking in circles sometimes.”

“That makes sense. You have known each other for- what? A decade?”

He sighed.

“You know how you said you’re sure I would have saved you? Like- had the shoe been on the other foot?” Jack stared at his hands.

“Sure.”

“I don’t know if I would have. And that’s unfair. I just remember- don’t laugh. I remember Gabe coming back to our room that night, back in Italy? Going on about how he met this cool ass girl , and he was going on and on and on about you, and I- I had been pussyfootin’ around him since we met, I was  _ so _ enamored. He does that, you know? And I just burst out that I was in love with him. And the look on his face. Oh man, it felt so good to get the jump on him just once, the look of shock. You should have seen it.”

Ana frowned.

“Well, he tells me we’ll talk. He doesn’t want to rush in, ruin our friendship, all that. So he takes me out to dinner the next night, and I laid it on thick. Sweet. Cute. You know, how you act in high school around the quarterback? Or- whatever you have back home? I don’t know if I’ve ever been so open with somebody. This might be a close runner up though.” He huffed an embarrassed little laugh, and Ana believed him. All the talking he was doing had turned him from red to periwinkle in the face.

“I guess it worked,” Ana said. Jack rubbed a spot on his neck.

“I guess. I asked him what he would think about taking you out, if you both wanted…” Every word was said slowly, like he was gearing up for her to scream.

“What did he say about that?” She felt her face turn hot.

“He might like that. If I could start being a little bit nicer to you.”

“Ah.”

“So. I’m sorry, I guess.”

“It’s okay.” She said.

They shook hands.

There was a propitious month before Fareeha got back home, and it was all glorious. Their first date was to a movie theater, Gabe silent, casting those long sideways glances at her, the muscles in her face hurting from smiling. A week later, he suggested golf, her eyebrows shooting upward at the suggestion.

“What?”

“Didn’t peg you as the type to like golf Gabe,” she chided.

“You can drive the caddy-”

“Cart?”

“Mmm, right.. Yeah, you can still drive that, you know, with your leg and all, and you can keep track of my score. I got to a 98 last time I went with Jack and he still hasn’t stopped making fun of me.”

“Ahhhh, now I see. I’m just here to be your caddy so you can beat Jack.”

“Well Reinhardt’s got a 64 so I definitely can’t ask him! Jesus,  _ pleeease _ help me out here.” She could hear him smiling on the other end of the line.

She ended up driving the cart into a pond, him hauling her out, water dripping into his eyes from his heavy brow line, and he kissed her, hands on both sides of her face.

Things were nice after that. It was an interesting way to maneuver things, her and Jack putting their heads together to think of birthday presents for Gabe, the three of them lounging on Gabe’s boat, the one thing that he probably liked more than the two of them put together, the two of them drinking beer, him sitting with his pants rolled up to his knees, feet kicking idly in the water.

The best part, hands down, was somebody to be there for Fareeha besides her, even for a moment while she ran to the store, and he seemed up to the challenge, enthusiastically so. He made the biggest, grandest gestures for her, coming back from Blackwatch missions with backpacks full of tokens from far away places, going to all her school plays and basketball games, teaching her the ins and outs of the boat. He’d cook dinner and tuck her daughter into bed then slide in next to Ana, nose crooked into her neck whispering “I love you, I love you.”

Gabe had perked up the last four weeks of summer this year, having been slightly surly with a lack of Fareeha around, after he had recruited a young man into Blackwatch. Now he had taken it upon himself to get him all trained up. He was just like that. The type of guy who wanted a litter of children, offered to hold babies while hassled looking moms ran into restaurant bathrooms, beaming, eyes squinted shut, crow’s feet deeper each and every time a cashier said his daughter was so pretty! Never bothering to correct them.

“Ana, would you mind showing Jesse the ropes with your type-uh-gun?” He asked one morning at breakfast, Jesse barely picking his chin from his chest whenever they spoke about him. It was just something to distract her while her daughter was gone, she thought, but accepted the task anyway.

McCree, what he apparently preferred to be called, was a quick study. Awkward, surly, and always quoting movies with bad impressions, he never seemed to stop moving, stop talking, just stop. She got onto him, maybe harder than he should, because while she was lining up her shot, he’d be gabbering, asking if she had seen the tv show he had just been reciting, and she would snap back, “You’ll last five seconds on a battlefield before your head’s blown off, the way you run your mouth.” She could just see the metaphorical tail tuck between his legs, but he still showed up every Thursday, all “yes ma’am” and “thank you”’s from there on out, and Gabe, Gabe actually taking offense that she had been short with his protege.

_ Bzz. Bzz. Bzz. _

She clambered in her chair, eyes quickly adjusting to the darkness, and snatched the phone up to her ear before bothering to see who would be calling at this hour.

“Baby?” A wobbly, guttural voice shot through the phone, beer practically drooling out of the receiver. Ana held her breath. “Baby, I know you’re mad, but your momma’s in bad shape. Your daddy, daggum piece of trash, he left me with nothing. Now Jesse, I shoulda stuck by you, I-” she hiccuped, and coughed down a spitty string of vomit for a moment. “You know I could never stick up for myself. You come back home, maybe see if you can get some money wired to me, hold me over til you get back. Honey? Jesse?”

Ana pressed the screen nearly half a dozen times before she managed to hit the little red button ending the call, her hands shook so badly. She glanced at Jesse, knees pulled to chest, still asleep, and remembered Gabe months ago, pleading, begging her to let him come to dinner at her house.

“I don’t want my daughter around boys like that.”

Gabe sighing, so heavily his shoulders slumped.

“He’s got nobody else. Please, you said it yourself, he’s just a boy.”

“I- That was- he’s a boy by age, sure, I’ll give you that. But you said it yourself , he’s a gang member-”

“Was.”

“And you don’t get into that sort of thing by volunteering at a soup kitchen is all I’m trying to say, Gabe,” she tapped her foot, crossed her arms, shutting him out.

“Ana, please, he got kicked out of his house by his parents. No other family. No money. I don’t know what I would have done if that had been me at fifteen. Can’t say I wouldn’t have ended up doing something dumb like that. Could you?” He leaned in, bending a little at the knee to look her in the eye, crisp October air pushing his inch long hair with the breeze. She bit her lip.

“Fine. But one comment about some dumb movie and he’s out.” She allowed herself to smirk, letting him know it was only a joke, and he pulled her up into a bear hug so her feet dangled inches off the ground, his lips pressing into her neck, her still wondering-

_ What could he have done to have been kicked out in the first place? _


	5. Jesse McCree, present day

**Jesse McCree, present day**

She was spinning the chamber of his gun, cross legged on his bed. Just a kid, by the looks of her, and by her big bright gaudy outfit.

“Jesus fuckin Christ!” He reached back to open the door, but with a wave of her hand, it stayed jammed despite his incessant jiggle of the handle. Realizing he wasn’t going anywhere, door locked and her with his gun, he willed his blood pressure to go back down. Steeply.. Take a deep breath of air.

“Aww, don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you!” And she sprang up from the bed, clicked the safety back on, and tossed him his gun. “See? Even ground.”

“Not really. Can’t exactly shoot a gun in a hotel room without causing some type of fuss.” He counted each bullet, which actually calmed him down so that his blood stopped throbbing against his veins.

There were two types of scroungers. The ones he had been, waif, ratty, hanging onto everything he got his paws on, the various therapists he saw in the months after Overwatch’s destruction told him he “projected sentimentals onto strangers.” He had shirts from Gabe’s childhood closet, dozens of old pictures laminated at a library, Jack’s agonizingly soft denim sherpa coat, and the baggage that came with living twenty years in the past.

Then, he assessed, there was the other type, standing right in front of him. Loud, over the top, staying in stranger’s houses for a single night, sneaking whatever she needed into her pockets, all with a smile on her face. Never angry, never sulky, just big gestures to get her through the day, smashing those thoughts of “you deserve what you got” down into the pavement. She was all shiny and seemed to buzz like clothes pulled freshly out of the dryer, somebody who thought if they piled on the accessories nobody would notice the rickety little kitten skeleton underneath bright layers of clothing.

“So. Ready to “talk turkey” as you charming Americans say?” She had both her hands on her hips, and gave a big whoop of laughter.

“I mean- I guess. What other choice is there?” He slunk down into the room’s only chair, his heart feeling like it might give way.

“Sombra. If you’re not going to ask.” She sat back down on the bed, rocking back and forth on the balls of her hands.

“Jesse.”

“I have good information that you prefer McCree though? Or should I call you-” she slid her hand down, and he saw a translucent copy of the hotel’s check-in materialize inches from her face. “--Joel Morricone?”

“Don’t.” He rubbed his fingers so deeply into his eyes that spots of orange danced behind his eyelids.

“Okay okay, sorry..” she trailed off.

“What are you doing here? Bounty hunter? I got cash if you’ll take it.”

“I mean, I won’t say no to cash, but that’s not why I’m here. Friend of a friend.” She shrugged.

“I don’t have any friends.” McCree responded without missing a beat. Her lip curled, and swiped her hand to the left again.

This picture, flipped so he could get a good look at it, was of him, Fareeha, and Gabe, squashed together on a well broken in couch. Taken by Gabe’s mom, Abuela, as she had insisted they call her. Their only trip to California in his whole time with Overwatch, to pick up the programming for Athena, and Gabe had dipped into his own pocket to bring them along. Three days, dry heat and yellowed grass and plenty of splashing that icy Pacific water at each other, shrieking and picking up seashells to bring back to everyone at Swiss HQ. They stayed at Gabe’s childhood home, a tiny ranch painted a windwashed seafoam with a chain link fence wrapped around the front yard, their neighbors two down with a big mural of the Virgin Mary painted on the easterly side of their own home.

His room had been preserved perfectly by his mother, a bunk bed tucked into the corner, a guitar still in its case, walls surprisingly lavender. They teased him about this at dinner, and Gabe had shrugged, pushing around his second serving of supper around on his plate.

“Thought girls would like it. And lord knows no guy wants to sleep in a bed with their ‘bro,’ or whatever. Just in case you were planning on teasing me about the bunkbed, too.” He smiled.

His mother, strict and Catholic, had hair still chocolate brown and the energy of a buoy bobbing up and down during high tide, feet always wearing bright pink flip flops that thwacked around at all hours, the squash of the linoleum under her feet letting you know how far away she was all the time. A bird cage sat perched atop the fridge of a marigold yellow kitchen, but Benny had free reign of the house, pulling hairs from Jesse’s head any time his hat was off, which was any time he was in Abuela’s sight, since wearing a hat indoors was “rude.”

Present day McCree rushed up out the chair, five drinks still sloshing in his stomach making him woozy, darting towards this Sombra girl, ready to do something stupid. He knew, knew that picture had been kept in Gabe’s wallet, had seen him look at it on longer Blackwatch missions, run a thumb over it with great heaps of paternal affection.

“I have the original. If you’re interested. Just need a favor.”

_Naturally._

Now he was in her space, and she pushed a phone into his right hand, waiting. He looked, up, down, up down, then-

He dialled the number she had already put in, and nearly dropped it when that warm, dry voice came through on the other end.

“Hello?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a short chapter, but i know a good chunk of readers are finishing up their school year currently. break a leg on those finals buddy!


	6. Gabriel Reyes, January 1, 2057

**Gabriel Reyes, January 1, 2057**

Everyone else had drank themselves into a stupor, minus Gabe, the permanent chaperone, and Ana, who had gotten in so late that they hadn’t even been awake to greet her, ask her about how the mission went, give her a dry kiss away from prying eyes, so he asked her to breakfast, knowing if he tried to patter around the rec room’s kitchen, he would hear those bleary grumbles to _“pleeease beee quieeeet!”_

It was all Americans on holiday in _their_ diner, their loud clatters of silverware falling onto ceramic plates and over enunciated words pissing Gabe off, Ana not even trying to distract him with tales of her latest mission.

“You seem... off. What’s up?” He asked finally, three cups of coffee in, still no breakfast on their table, his fingers drumming, eyes darting over to glare at the party of ten who had been done with their meal for twenty minutes, and now were sat around chatting despite the line out the door. Ana twirled a lock of hair, and since she was typically not a fidgeter, Gabe geared up for the worst, anxiety flipping his empty stomach.

“Somebody called Jesse last night, late last night.” She started, but didn’t seem to know what to say next.

“Uh huh. And what did they want?” He stopped drumming on the table, still as a hunting dog.

“I think it was his mom,” she said, voice chagrined, still twirling that loop of shiny black hair. Then Gabe remembered she left Jesse and Fareeha back at base, telling her daughter, you can only watch television once you’re done with this list of chores, Jesse offering to help her clean up since it was his mess in the rec room too. Ana had left them together, and Gabe realized that she must trust him now, this urchin boy who she didn’t even want in her house the first few months he spent skulking around Overwatch’s base. _And_ she was worried. Neither of them knew this anything about Jesse’s parents, couldn’t really judge them, but knew Fareeha could commit murder and it wouldn’t be enough for them to banish her to the streets.

“Oh.” He realized how empty the single word sounded, and Ana must have too, snaking a hand across the table and squeezing his with a good amount of force, her spindly, dry hands, covered with wisps of hair, muscular from wielding a rifle, and Gabe exhaled. It was good to be here, with her. It was good she was back.

“What do you know about why-- why that happened?” Ana pressed, and Gabe couldn’t offer more than a shrug.

“He won’t tell me. I’ve tried, and he- shuts down. I don’t want to piss him off. He’ll tell me if he wants.”

They ate quietly, both of them knowing not to push it. A few days of this passed, him spending more time with Jack, who he could rely on to not ask questions, just pick a movie for him, fawn over how good dinner was, run his fingers through his hair and kiss the corners of his mouth, and not ask too much of him when he got in these moods.

His mom called them baby blues, when he got like this. A child denied the puppy they had been eyeing at the pet store. She tried to cheer him up, teasing him at first, all ‘pobrecitos’  and trying to hoist him up into her arms for a round of ‘sana sana’s’. He’d lock himself in his room, lay down on his stomach, unmoved and so tense his mom would run a finger under his nostrils to make sure he was still breathing. But he never grew out of them. The days after he had burnt his binder of plans, he had laid down on the rug, no longer wishing for the fire to consume the base, but him. Everything he wanted, physical things like children and a big office to lead from, to mentalities, like trust and a banishment of this glumness that always lingered around like his shadow, could never be. There was something wholly untrustworthy about him apparently, something he couldn’t see, that made him an embarrassment to Jack, made Ana grateful that he didn’t father her child, made Jesse unable to trust him enough to let him in. Digging his grave of pity a little deeper, he wondered when Fareeha would stop loving him with every bit of her heart, not want him to come around to her school events and skipping over him when she was learning to drive, preferring her mom, or Reinhardt, or Jack, or Ron.

He wanted a drink. Wanted it so badly, could almost taste the burn of syrupy tequila on his tongue. His dad had been a drinker. Not as heavily as a soap opera would portray, nothing so dramatic, but enough. Driving home, he had swerved over the median, overcorrected, and killed himself, along with a newlywed couple and their baby. The family had sued the insurance company, his mom actually pulling out great chunks of her thick hair out when it wasn’t enough, when all of the life insurance his dad had left behind still wasn’t enough, and she was left to make monthly payments for the rest of her life. And they had moved from Silicon Valley, where his dad designed AI programs for the omnics who now operated fast food companies, to a dingy little neighborhood full of other people who would take care of Gabe when his mom worked her second job sewing costumes for teen dramas, sold the boat Gabe had been dying to learn to sail himself, and never spoke of her husband again, his mom chucking her wedding band in the ground while a machine piled dirt over his casket.

So he didn’t drink. It turned his belly sour, watching Ana and Jack clink beers together on the boat now, but knew he couldn’t stop anyone from doing whatever the fuck they wanted to do, so at least he was there to get them back alive. And Jesse, lingering at those bars, it made his blood boil, brain simmering so rapidly his eyes shook in his skull, but he never yelled. All he said was, Jesse, if you’re going to drink, do it at your house. I’ll even buy you beer, I swear, cross my heart and hope to die.

He checked the clock, and realized he had been laying in bed for nearly sixteen hours, sleeping less than a third of that. Beams of sunlight streamed beneath his curtains, and he flung his covers off the bed, willing himself to get up. By the time he slunk through the front doors, he had been sulking in the darkness of his house for over a day.

Jesse had been finishing homework before he let Gabe in, his room up to standard, but only so.

“You gotta fill the bowls up with water if you’re going to eat cereal three meals a day,” Gabe said, peering into his sink with a pulled nose.

“Is that tip for free or do I owe you something for the piece of wisdom?” Jesse said, settling himself back into his chair, the very bottom of his deadlock tattoo peaking out from his shirt’s sleeve.

“Free.” Gabe said, gearing himself up. “You want to go get some lunch? I’d love for just.. A really greasy cheeseburger right now.”

Jesse sat up in his seat a little more, taut and alert.

“Really? Isn’t that against like.. A soldier’s diet? Or at least yours?” He twisted his back around to get a good look at Gabe.

It was, but he also hated basketball with a burning passion all of his youth, couldn’t ever get into the Lakers even though he had spent most of his life half an hour from the Staples Center, but still went to every single game of Fareeha’s, got riled up about unfair calls, practiced with her on weekends if he could manage it, even recorded every game on tv and watched them half asleep so he could remember the rules of the game. So he’d go get something eat with Jesse, even if it clogged his arteries and made his insides feel like jelly.

The windy stretch of coastal highway sent the car weaving, barely an inch, back and forth over the yellow line, Gabe’s car a silver hybrid clocking in at over two hundred thousand miles, bought very used and only driven to get groceries and chauffeur Fareeha and Jesse around to school events.

Brown paper bags of food crunched happily as they stuck their hands into each of their bags, pulling out loose fries, the beach parking lot ugly and bleached from the winter sun, the only other sound was of rocky pieces of sand smacking up against the mostly plastic car.

“Jesse. I’m going to be honest with you. And if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine, but I want to know why your parents would.. Do something like that. Kick you out.” He wiped greased salt of the fries off of his mustache the best he could, knowing either way, the sweet hot smell would be stuck to his face until he showered. He could hear Jesse not breathing.

“Because I really can’t wrap my head around it. I’ve known you for a little, and you’ve done nothing vicious, or thoughtless, or- frightening. It makes me think that it’s something wrong with them. I hope you don’t mind me saying that.”

Instead of a response, Jesse put his hand on the car handle, and Gabe obliged him, unlocking the doors. _If you want to leave, you can._ But at the gesture, Jesse flexed his hands, then buried them between the crook of his knees.

“It’s nothing like that. You don’t have to worry about me being near your daughter or animals or nothin’ like that.”

“I don’t.”

“I just got caught, kissing a boy in my room. That’s all.” Jesse shrugged. “We had skipped school, which- well we did that a lot, and my parents were s’posed to be at work, and I knew we liked each other, and- well I don’t need to get into the nitty gritties now, but then there was my daddy, standing in the doorway, looking for the scissors I had forgot to put back in the drawer, and _shiiiit_ , he was pissed. I always gotta laugh when-” he choked back a wet chuckle, “-when people say ‘Oh, you think things are bad now? Y’all just want to be unhappy then, you can get married and give blood, if that ain’t good enough, it’s bellyaching at this point. Y’all are a whole buncha crybabies.’” He was doing some sort of impression of a southern preacher, hands waving and accent gone deeply twangy and booming in the confines of Gabe’s tiny car, then coughed and continued. “Cause I’ll tell you, my daddy must have not gotten that memo. I don’t think my ribs ever set right.” Even now, when he took a deep inhale, that indication he was done, done talking, done telling this story, his breathing sounded harsh, as if his ribs were papery accordions, ivory keys poking into his lungs.

“Fuck your parents. They’re assholes.” He grabbed Jesse’s shoulder hard and gave him a little shake. “Listen to me, there’s nothing wrong with you.”

“I know that.”

Gabe waved a hand away.

“I don’t mean about that shit, but... I meant about everything. You’re smart, and you’ve got this killer memory, and have a good heart. Don’t let shit hooks like your parents think you’re worth any less than you are. I’m serious. You don’t need them. We’re your family, me, and Fareeha, and Ana, and Jack. We got you.”

Jesse sniffed, and Gabe took his hand off his shoulder, and put the car in drive, jotting down a mental note in an imaginary binder-

_“How long does the adoption process take?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this feeling that because Gabe doesn't drink he feels as if there's a certain amount of disconnect with a lot of his family and coworkers. Obviously I can't speak for every latinx person but I know within my family it was just part of "who we are" to drink very heavily and very frequently, and it feels like you're ashamed of your culture by choosing not to partake in. I write Gabe as purposefully othering himself from his culture, both the good parts and the bad. Now that Jesse is, for lack of a better term, in his care, he'll have to inspect how his self hatred effects (affects?) other people (especially since I HC Jesse is latino as well)


	7. Jesse McCree, present day

**Jesse McCree, present day**

Jesse had lied to his mom. He had no friends. There were people who would meet him at bars if he rolled into their neck of the woods, who he relied on not to report him to the police only because they were guilty of much worse crimes, but no friends. Having anybody closer than an arm’s length made his stomach get oil slick.

But he had let Sombra sleep in the other queen bed, (he always wondered, why was it cheaper to have two queens in a room than one king?) actually feeling a little ping of stupidity when she peeled the purple and black wig off her head, revealing tight coils of inch long hair, save for the sides of her head shaved with angular designs.

When he woke up, it was to her shaking him, insisting that they eat something before hitting the road. It was hard enough for McCree to eat more than a single meal in a day, nevermind eating anything before noon.

“You look awful,” Sombra said, head ducked so she could look up under his hat.

“Sorry. Guess I don’t take too well to finding out somebody who was dead, really wasn’t.”

He was still reeling from his phone call with Ana. All those years, lying to everybody, and Fareeha, still not knowing, Ana asking him for the utmost secrecy. He asked her, why, what in the world had possessed her to do such a thing? And she had let out such a long sigh it was as if the air had been vacuumed out of her lungs. “The guilt, darling. You really do not know what it does to a person.” He did though, and he was still mad. What guilt? What had she done wrong, ever, in her whole life?

Sombra pushed a cup of coffee and a brittle muffin sitting atop a paper napkin towards him. “I’ll need you in tip top shape today, McCree. Got a long looong way to go, and you’ll need to drive a good portion of it.”

“Why?” He took the coffee, but left the pastry staring up at him.

“Girl’s gotta work,” Sombra shrugged, pulling the muffin back across the table and letting it fall into the purse on her lap.

“Oh Jesus, quit that,” McCree hissed, eyes darting over the lobby of hoi polloi, sunburnt men whose shorts cut deep into their pregnant looking bellies, fussy frail bitties with hair so teased that it nearly grazed the ceiling, even a single white woman feeding her dog a bit of flaccid bacon.

Sombra seemed to be following his gaze, and gave a short chuckle before sneaking a few packets of honey into the gaping mouth of her pocketbook.

“So, we didn’t really get a chance to talk last night,” he started, not exactly sure which angle to hit this at. He had locked himself in the bathroom the moment he had realized it was Ana, and had emerged shell shocked, hit with a frying pan sortof look.

“You want to know how I know Ana?” Sombra leaned in, one eyebrow raised, like all of this was just a tense game of Texas Hold ‘Em. He nodded, but she leaned back, took a sip of coffee, and went quiet for a minute. When she spoke, it was in a different tone, definitely not completely serious, but closer than she had gotten thus far.

“Her name, her- call name, if you want to call it that, kept coming up in my line of work-”

“Which is?”

“Don’t you know it is veeeery rude to interrupt?” She tutted, and kept going.

“Obviously I didn’t know who she was, who she really was, those first few months, but I cracked it eventually. I always do.” Sombra winked, and McCree’s stomach dropped a few inches. How long had she been following him? As if she had read his thoughts, she gave a heavy eyeroll and smiled.

“Don’t worry about that, you haven’t done anything I wouldn’t have. Well- not exactly,” she let out a big woop of laughter, like she had just recalled an inside joke.

“Once I figured out who she was, I gave it a few months, then made contact. I buttered her up pretty nicely, I think. Let her talk about Overwatch, about Commander Morrison, about Gabe, about you--”

Something shifted in his brain, but he couldn’t pick up on it yet, not so early, so he let the words continue to wash over him.

“She said if I ever made contact with her daughter, she’d kill me. And I believed her. So here we are.” She shrugged, then stood up for one last round of five finger discounts.

“What do you mean? Here we are?” McCree called, a little louder than he meant to, so a few stray turkey-necked tourists turned towards them. She turned her profile to him, all one roller coaster of sharp angles and rolling baby cheeks, a single olive black eye narrowed.

“We can talk more in the car.”

McCree wasn’t sure what he had been expecting.. Something… sleeker, maybe? Something flashy, but here sat a plain, unassuming car. A mid sized, charcoal gray sedan, and when they got in he had to let the seat roll all the way back to make room for his legs, Sombra pulling a laptop out from under the passenger seat, tapping away at the gps on the window. It frustrated him, the way she seemed to radiate optimism. As they drove she buzzed with busy work, sliding her holos over with the gusto of somebody on the brink of discovering the cure for cancer.

They had crossed over the Mississippi when the words that had been floating around Jesse’s brain since breakfast snapped into place, the great expanse of water beneath them making him think of lazy days on the boat.

“You called him Gabe.” He settled back into his seat a little more, careful not to take his eyes off the road. “You knew him?”

“A... long time ago, yes.” There was the sound of her swiping holos out of the air, her hands wringing together, and her usual light tone now confessional serious.

“A long time ago? He’s been dead for six years, you meet him selling girl scout cookies?”

“I’m flattered, but no. He was trying to recruit me, into Overwatch. Into Blackwatch.”

“I was under the impression that was the sorta thing you couldn’t say no to,” McCree thought of Genji’s limp form being flown into a nearby hospital, him, McCree, with his G.E.D, who couldn’t even remember the words to ‘Dem Bones’ being left to prep a table, Angela putting on gloves without washing her hands, and Jesse, so nervous he was giggling, trying to make a joke about reporting her to that fancy Swiss hospital, and when she turned to look at him, he actually shrank back.

“We got separated before he got the chance to really push his point,” She shrugged, her lips pulled in. If Jesse knew her, even a little bit better, he might have tried to say something consoling, but instead he looked forward, eyes landing on a dead snake right on the brink between the road and the fountain grass.

“I was born here,” he mentioned, as they passed the “Sweet Home Alabama!” sign, blinking rapidly, almost ominously at them. It wasn’t in his nature to admit just how Deliverance his family had been, tucked away in those steep, rich soiled valleys, but he figured, fact for fact, so that maybe he could get a hair more information on Sombra, who had gone back to work moments after their short lived conversation.

“Here? Really? I thought you were all spaghetti western,” she hummed with mirth, but still clacked away.

“Aw, like you didn’t already know everything about me,” McCree chided, then added, “Took Mama three weeks to name me. She thought she was getting fat. Fatter.” He waited a beat. “What about you? Named after a relative, or did your parents flip to a random page in a baby book, too?”

Silence.

He thought of Gabe’s mother while they drove. How they had flown back to Los Angeles together to bury the meager remains of her only child, how she had insisted he stay with her, since her son went on and on and on about that Jesse McCree, how he was his mijo, his kin, and if that was meant to cheer Jesse up, it hadn’t worked. But he stayed. It was the longest stretch of good behavior he had ever been on in his life, trying to make sure this poor woman didn’t suffer more than she already had, her son being labeled as a terrorist, a mass murderer, a coward, a traitor. Which was true, but besides the point.

It wasn’t enough. The grief took her seven months later. Her last words were that she couldn’t bear it any longer, she needed to see her baby.

Jesse was unable to find stable enough work to keep up with the high cost of living in California, so the house went into foreclosure, then he left. And the only work that seemed to come his way was unwholesome and under the table. There were standards he upheld for himself, but not a whole lot. Five years of work like this wore a person down into dust, and it showed. His fingers were all cracked and dried, deep crow’s feet from the sun baking his skin, purple and deep set bags under his eyes from seven years of bad sleep.

Somewhere north of Knoxville, Sombra told him to pull over so they could stretch their legs, get a smoke, and grab some food. She didn’t smoke, but she swayed back and forth, letting the wind blow the cigar’s trail into her face, a single beer tucked between her knees while she nursed it for half an hour, his sitting crumpled up by his feet, having slammed it back in six gulps.

“I’ll drive,” she said once they had finished their meal of Combos and Slim Jims, her arms littered with a few sports drinks and protein shakes. “I don’t get much service out here anyway.” And she imitated a banjo’s strumming.

With nothing to talk about, night having fallen hard at this point, Jesse fell into a fitful sleep, the mountain roads making his stomach drop, ears feeling full of cotton, and the uncertainty of what he had committed himself to, getting into the car with a stranger under the guise that she was going to help him.

They had never continued their talk from the previous day’s breakfast, he realized, the light streaming through his eyelids turning his darkened vision pink, and they snapped open.

“So what is the plan here?”

“Good morning to you, too.”

“Cut the shit. Tell me what we’re doing, where we’re going, who the fuck you are,” McCree demanded, feeling spiteful towards himself for getting so wrapped up in some kid’s plans without asking literally anything of her.

“Well, I’m Sombra,” she replied pertly.

“For the love of Christ if I don’t get some daggum answers I’m outta here,” McCree’s neck felt red hot under his sarape, sweat billowing up like steam onto his chin.

“Good luck getting back to the midwest,” she sniped, gesturing around the bright dawn sun streaming onto the rolling Appalachian mountains surrounding them, overly lush and a deep saturated green, cows and signs about the birth of America streamlining past the car. She was trying to sound cool, but there was a bit of bite in her voice. Whatever they were doing, she needed him to be in on it. He folded his arms and tapped his foot, spurs jingling merrily. She folded.

“Did you get the recall last month?”

He decided to tell the truth.

“I did. Don’t appreciate havin’ tabs kept on me by Winston, but…” He held up his hands, in a “whatcha gonna do?” sort of way. “Apparently that’s a popular thing to do these days.”

Now the news, which had been a steady stream of bad, worse, and awful, had burst like a cracked dam. McCree imagined newspaper clippings spurting from televisions and holos and desktop computers, with words like “ HARD TIMES, ” “ DEATH, ” and “ MORE TROUBLES ” only now sprinkled with “ OVERWATCH, ” “ OVERWATCH AGENTS, ” “ THE RETURN OF OVERWATCH? ”

The Petras Act had been officially breached. Overwatch agents were subduing omnics and their opposers both violently and not so, only to be swarmed by whichever country’s police forces, SWAT teams sent out. Images of tubby guys in their cop uniforms pinning Overwatch agents down into the pavement, their faces freckled from road-rash, but that big orange and white circle gleaming on their shoulders like a badge of honor surfaced onto the internet every few days, each arrest making McCree more determined to stay out of it. He’d had his trouble, he was full up, thanks.

“Genji got one, too. He had.. Similar reservations, but I think he’s our way in. That’s who we’re meeting.”

“In?” McCree had beads of sweat on the tip of his nose, his whole body turned clammy, could feel his blood thrum against his throat.

Sombra drummed on the steering wheel with her nails.

“To investigate. Get the files from the U.N. They’ll humor him, at the very least. Don’t you really want to know who set those bombs? Who betrayed Overwatch?”

“Commander Reyes did.”

_ Don’t think, don’t think, don’t think.  _ McCree willed his squelchy brain to flatline, think of nothing, but he hadn’t had a drink since their single little baby cans of beer last night, and his whole equilibrium was off kilter, all his intestines turned into a dark and cloudy oil slick, electricity popping across his temples every few minutes.

Sombra actually turned to him, her eyes widened, and said in a dumbstruck voice-

“You really think so?”

“He was working with Talon for years. He killed somebody without a flicker of thought of what it would do to Overwatch, Blackwatch, anything. I don’t know if you were too young to remember, but it was a big thing. Imagine carrying around something like that? And you know what? He lied to everyone, lied to me, and Fareeha, and Ana, and Jack, and the whole world. I tried to get him out of that fucking shell, but I had to look out for me, too, you know. Since he was done with caring about Blackwatch once he got caught red handed for the shit he pulled. After London, I thought, maybe.. things might could get better.. I was foolin' myself though. Knew it was the end. Knew he was going to do something drastic eventually. And I was right, wasn’t I?”

McCree had the sudden urge to fling himself out of the car, the door whipping off its hinges in the great mountain gusts, and tumble down the road for a football field’s length, big rigs flattening his corpse a hundred times over before Sombra could manage to stop the car and get back to him.

“Pull over.”

She laughed nervously, and his whole body was iron red with anger.

His guilt was not to be laughed at.

“Pull over now.”

Sombra swerved off the road, cars blaring their horns for a whole minute while Jesse vomitted, took off his sarape and flannel so he was just in his shirt, sweat dripping into his anxiety ridden bile.

They drove a few more miles, then McCree stumbled into a gas station with only his flannel halfway buttoned up, mouth rank, and drank a twelve pack of Milwaukee’s Best while the wind whipped his hair up on an overlook, ladybugs scattered so densely on his arm it looked like he had a weird rash. He tapped Sombra on the fat of her arm with a single can, and she took it, legs swinging over the edge of the craggly cobblestone wall separating them and a two thousand foot drop.

“Thanks,” she mumbled, and they sat for another hour while he drank his beers, then wordlessly got back into the car and started their journey, even though McCree, now knowing the point of all of this, thinking it was utterly fucking pointless.

 

 

 

 

**That day, that winter morning, those sheet like clouds hanging above their heads** was all he could think about. He spent all of his time trying to block the memories of Gabriel Reyes, and savor the good people from his life, mentally dropping blots of ink over his dead commander’s face and putting cotton in his ears to stop himself from hearing that stormy voice.

The reason Genji and Angela spoke to him in clipped tones, the reason he hadn’t spoke to Fareeha all this time, was for one reason alone. He had gone back that day. Drove up to Swiss HQ just hours before it would be flattened.

He had been in Munster for nearly a year when Angela tracked him down, her presence weighing down on him like a sack of bricks while she paced around his room, trying to find him something even remotely clean to wear.

“Gabe is not doing well, Jesse,” her tone waspish while she ironed a shirt of his. “I think he, maybe... I don’t know. Maybe he will listen to you?”

Hungover and nervous, he had sat next to her in her zero emission, baby blue, deafeningly quiet car, fiddling with the buttons of his shirt.

They had barely gotten through the security manned gates when the car shook. They had thought it was an earthquake, and kept driving, slower, but still moving through the grounds of headquarters.

A helicopter whirred above their heads, which had always been a regular occurrence at headquarters, nothing to write home about, and yet they both exchanged a nervous glance before--

The freshly paved asphalt road split in two. Months later, the investigators would discover that they had run over a wire hanger like device attached to a land mine, and had Angela’s car run on traditional fossil fuels, it would have triggered nearly a dozen more explosions from the debris scatter. Small miracles, they said, shaking their heads.

As it were, the car flipped onto its side, the two of them laid sideways in the car, Angela noisily unbuckled herself, her body slamming into the driver’s seat window, crawling over McCree, hulling him out of the car with her porcelain frail arms, then dashing off to the health center to get help, find something for the gash splitting McCree’s cheek wide open.

But there was no time, he thought, his adrenaline surging him up off the ground and beginning to stumble through the roads, somehow avoiding any more trip wires, tripping over his oversized boots like he was blackout drunk. It was the beginning of a good Swiss blizzard, fat snowflakes falling into the deep crevice of his busted face, turning his blood icy in minutes.

Jack’s office, since he knew where it was by heart now, was next. The big boom knocked McCree off his feet, and he began to crawl forward. By now he was so close, he could hear Jack and Gabe through the now shattered window, Gabe sounding consoling, relaxed even, Jack pleading, desperate. Everything smelt of gunpowder and gasoline and freshly tilled soil. McCree picked up a single rock and threw it up at that big open space, then heard a thunk, too loud to be of the pebble falling on the floor, and it all went quiet, save for some ragged, keening breaths of air.

He had been listening so hard to that breathing, trying to discern if it was Jack or Gabe. If he could find a way to hack into the doors that had slid shut into lockdown, bank vault thick, he could help whichever one was still alive. All thoughts were on prying those doors apart, so completely deaf to everything else that he didn’t even register the other sounds around him.

_ Tck tck tck. _

The whole place was blasted apart.

He tried to skid back, but his slick leather gloves just slipped across the ice, unable to seek purchase, arms giving out underneath him. There was that one second, where he saw that great slab of concrete hurtling towards him before it slammed into his arm, and McCree let out a shriek that sent those last few brave birds bolting into the sky. His body had full control now, all instinct, finer tuned thoughts turned to scratchy white noise, while he tried to jerk around, dislodge his arm, if nothing else, dislodge himself from his arm. While he flailed and kicked, curled his stomach into a cat like stretch to look for others, somebody to help, he saw somebody watching him a stone’s throw away.

Jack Morrison, dead. Staring at him, lips barely parted, eyes sliced open, blood dripping out of them like big watery tears into his mouth. From McCree’s angle, he could only see half of his face, the right side so broken it looked more like ground hamburger, the left paler than the snow that was now sticking to his lifeless body, like a wintery shroud.

He dislodged his arm, body flailing like he was having a seizure. He might have been. He never found out. He woke up, days later, in a white room, a hospital bed, snow still gathering at the windowsill, the sight of it enough to make him lean over the bed and vomit nothing but watery green bile.

They kept him sedated for a week, and when Fareeha was allowed to discharge him, they gave him half a dozen prescriptions, antibiotics, painkillers, something to help him sleep, an endless dose of xanax, biotic matter to rub onto his half an arm now, to help the scarring.

He took it all, knocked back two or three of the painkillers at a time, Fareeha, hands wringing, asking if he needed help getting his bandages on, he’d oblige her, sitting at the end of his bed calmly, then, if she went to the bathroom, or had to take a call, he’d tuck into the vodka he had stolen from the bar downstairs, otherwise the minibar when the vodka ran out.

McCree hated when people said that when somebody dies, the grief numbs you to get through everything. He never felt that numbness in the years following that night. Even his arm, no longer there, still ached at the thought of that night.

Angela and Fareeha had to do everything.

But the funerals wouldn’t be held until after the investigation was complete, so there was a lot of sitting around, Fareeha and Angela ducking out for lunch or to watch a movie, and had given up asking McCree if he wanted to come after the sixth or seventh time. He’d sit back in bed, the curtains drawn as to not see the snow beat against their frosty window, a bottle of whiskey in his hand, flipping through the channels, landing on old westerns where there was no gore, no cold weather, just ping! BAM! And an old timey actor would clutch his chest and fall to the ground. The credits would roll, and Jesse could almost see flashes of dead bodies in a morgue somewhere, his commanders, lying side by side, the fluorescents turning their skin sage green.

He had planned to stay with Fareeha after the funerals, she had offered him a room at her apartment, her trying to get him to budge up, and he tried playing along. Finally, finally, finally, managing to ask her with a begrudging smile one day if she had a balcony to smoke on, and she beamed, so happy he was even thinking about the future she seemed to glow with optimism.

A knock came through the door. Fareeha glanced at McCree, he shrugged, and together they crossed the room, opening the door wide for their mystery guest. It was one of the investigators also staying in their hotel, grim faced and always wearing a ball cap. He needed to speak to McCree.

In a suite, they sat McCree down, and asked if he wanted a lawyer.

“What for?” He said, leaned back in his chair, his only hand pressed into the edge of the desk, ready to spring up and dash out if he felt the need.

“Liability. Usually we’d assign you the lawyer Overwatch had on retainer, but it’s our understanding,” this guy, this new guy Jesse had never seen before at headquarters, was shuffling through papers, not even looking at Jesse, eyes very occasionally darting to his bandaged arm. “That you left Overwatch, more specifically, Blackwatch nearly nine months ago. Convenient.”

He said those last words under his breath, and if he was trying to rile McCree up, it was working.

“So why did you leave Blackwatch? Did you, maybe, know something?” This detective, all wispy combed over hair and paunchy belly was not going to let him leave until he got something out of McCree. That was fine. He had nothing to hide.

“I sure didn’t. I-” But he stopped. It was an insult to the dead to say what he really felt, what he had been thinking these last few months.

“Director Petras has his men out at the base right now. There are still four people unaccounted for. Don’t you want to help their families find peace?”

McCree actually scoffed, fought down the urge to smack him so hard the the snowcaps of dandruff on each of his shoulders rumbled.  _ What about my family? _

“How about this? We’ll grant you clearing to Gabriel Reyes housing. You go through it, see if there’s anything that could help us out, then we can maybe put this matter to bed, and you can jet off to Egypt with Miss Amari.”

It sounded reasonable enough.

Fareeha made up some excuse as to why she couldn’t go, and it left him and Angela, her driving a rental car, to make their way through all the yellow tape and security clearances, until they were at Gabe’s door, a floor above Jack and Ana’s.

McCree had a flash of Gabe recruiting him and Fareeha to help with the groceries, since he had fourteen more stairs to go than those hotshots on the first floor, and he’d wink at Fareeha, since she was, as he called it “ground floor bougie.” The pair of them would get a basket, Gabe with the cart, and push it around the cramped little aisles of the base’s commissary, then lug the loads of food up the stairs, the plastic bags leaving pink indents up and down all of their arms, since two trips were for babies.

Jesse looked at ruined arm, thought of how there would never be rings of red from grocery loads any more, and let himself into the room with a huff.

There were papers scattered all across the floor, the word TRAITOR spray painted across the walls, all his black pants and crew neck t shirts laying in smoldering ashes, McCree still rifling through them, looking for something. Anything.

Angela stood close to the walls, careful not to touch anything, like the place was riddled with disease.

“You let me know if you need some help opening anything, I’ll be right here.” She said, hands folded, wearing her most modest mourning attire, black from head to toe.

He beelined to the bedside table, pushing all its contents aside, and there it was. That little ring box, perfectly preserved. Jesse slipped it into his pocket, then began his genuine search. Something to absolve Gabe of whatever they thought he was guilty of.

Instead, he found those fucking binders. Twelve of them, organized, tabbed and color coded, perfectly ordinary for Gabe, notorious for his Type A personality. But words had been scratched out in pen, erased in pencil. Over and over and over again, the musings of somebody possessed. Jesse had never enjoyed horror movies, his eyes always darted around and his hands stayed firmly clapped over his ears if he was forced to watch one, but remembered a movie about the devil possessing a college girl, her writing nasty words all over her pink bedroom walls in her own blood.

“Kill” had been struck through at least a half dozen times in one binder, then “die, die, die.” Titles of poems and prose, and even McCree and his shaky memories of American Literature could pick out lines of Walden.

Sometimes, in a summer morning,

having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise

till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,

in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or

flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at

my west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distant

highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons

like corn in the night,

It seemed jarringly out of place. Everything else was so- haunting. Poorly drawn birds, lists of sniper rifle models, symptoms of hypothermia, handdrawn blueprints of the building, little lines meant to label people, maps of how to get out quickly. He kept flipping, stomach so low in his belly he thought it might fall out. On a final page there was-

“9:15- Call Jesse.”

“9:30- Call Agent Muertos to help Jack”

Muertos. Jesse had never picked up a lick of Spanish save for a few numbers and menu items, but there it was. Dead. It had to be code, code for ‘Kill Jack.’

Those muttered words of Gabe’s, because it had definitely been Gabe and Jack speaking. He wished he could rewind time, if only to listen harder. What had he said to Jack?

He tore out the page with the poem as quietly as he could manage, sliding it down his shirt, then turning around to stare gravely at Dr. Ziegler, one arm holding all of those binders. He gave Angela every single one of them, then asked to be dropped off at a bar. She looked as if she were about to argue, when McCree said, “If you don’t let me out, I’ll just open this door. Don’t push it, doc.” His teeth were chattering, legs pulled up to his chest.

She let him out, and he drank, drank until he was kicked out, stumbling back to the hotel and weeping as loud and freely as a child.

He told the representative the very next day that he had heard a conversation between Jack and Gabe moments before the explosion, and how calm Gabe had sounded, and how Jack had been begging, crying. He watched Angelia slide the binders across the table, unable to look him in the eye. The UN officials thanked the pair of them over and over again, lauding them as good people, dedicated civil servants, but when the suite door clicked behind him, Fareeha stood there in the hall, open mouthed, clearly having heard every word of their conversation.

“He didn’t do it,” she muttered.

Angela just stared at her feet, chagrined color rising up her face, but McCree was done.

“He did it, Fareeha. It’s time to fucking grow up. It's over. He didn’t care about, you, or me, or anyone in this place. If he did, he wouldn’t have done this.” And he jabbed at angry finger at the door of the suite. “Go home. There’s nothing left for you here.” With nothing else to say, he left her standing there.

They hadn’t spoken since.


	8. Gabriel Reyes, 2061

**Gabriel Reyes, 2061**

This woman had taken up the better half of three years, yanking him around, attempting to extort him, insisting she would only sign over her rights if he provided monetary compensation, threatened to call up her estranged husband, fly him out to Gibraltar, and blow Gabriel Reyes away with the hunting rifle she told him she kept tucked under her bed. He’d had enough.

He called his lawyer, packed two suits and a slew of white shirts, and was sitting on the curb, waiting for his taxi when Jack came darting around the corner like a dog that had just gotten out of its kennel, his blue duffle bag slapping against hip as he hustled toward Gabe, skidding to a halt and clutching his chest.

“Thought- I might have- missed you,” he said in between sharp inhales.

All Gabe could manage was a raise of the eyebrows, a curve of the lip.

“Well, take a load off soldier,” he said, patting the pavement next to him.

Gabe pulled out a blanket from his backpack on their fifteen hour flight, good old forever cold Gabe, and intertwined his fingers with Jack’s so the lawyer, an attorney Overwatch had on retainer, a row ahead of them couldn’t see. They could never be together in public, those were Jack’s words, the public opinion of Overwatch would turn to ashes, but he couldn’t stop wanting to hold a hand, caress a cheek, wrap an arm around a waist. He craved affection, would wrap himself around Ana or Jack, nose pressed into the crooks of their necks, heat billowing off his body. Even as a boy, he would sling his legs across his mom’s lap while they watched television, her telling him his feet smelt like cooked corn husks and shoving them off, both of them laughing.

While only he and the lawyer could be in the actual courtroom, Jack had gotten dressed alongside him at the hotel, watching Gabe shear his hair off, chunks of it falling to the floor in puffy clumps and fixing his tie for him. Just as Jesse’s mom had reached the top step of the courthouse, glaring at the pair of them, Jack had pressed a thumb into Gabe’s forearm, whispered “good luck.” then hustled down the stairs to hail a cab.

It didn’t take long. Gabe had holos of Jesse recounting the story of his father’s abuse, pushing tears back up into his eyes, Dr. Ziegler had taken a weekend to come into town, x-ray McCree’s improperly set rib, even written a report on the reasons that could come to be. Gabe had receipts proving he put Jesse through the remainder of high school, bought him new clothes, pictures of Ana, Jack, Fareeha, Jesse, even Gabe in one or two of those rare occasions he’d been convinced to let somebody else man the camera. Ilios and Numbani and beneath the Hollywood sign, all toothy smiles and sunglasses pushed back into their hairlines.

All Nancy McCree had was a birth certificate and a few Mother’s Day presents she had kept in a box in the attic. Gabe felt the ping of sympathy for the woman, her eyelids red rimmed and russet skin blotchy and high cheeks flush with shame. He diverted his eyes when the mediator said he was severing ties between Jesse McCree and his biological parents. Papers were signed, and it was over. He stood up, ignoring the congratulations he heard his lawyer offer, and Gabe muttered something about needing a few minutes to himself, and Jeff could head back to the hotel now.

He sat on the bench outside of the courthouse, creamy ivory papers in his hand, sweaty hands turning the documents saying Jesse McCree has been legally adopted damp at the corners, when he saw her. She was leaving the bar across the way, the streets of this city so compact and buildings so smushed together that the courthouse looked out of place. He tried to shed his jacket quickly, hoping if he was just donning the starchy white shirt underneath, she wouldn’t recognize him. She did.

Nancy crossed the street in a diagonal line, ignoring the cars screeching and slamming on their horns while she made her way towards Gabe, who had risen off his bench now, hands deep in his pockets, the abandoned papers threatening to flutter away in the breeze.

“I hope you’re real fuckin’ happy,” she hollered, still twenty feet away. Passersby walking their dogs and college students with cheap backpacks turned to stare, a few of them even coming to a halt.

“Let’s not do this. It’s done. We won’t ever bother you,” he shook his head, trying to pacify her, remind her she was a free woman now, unburdened by any children or husbands.

“Oh I fuckin’ bet you won’t,” she tried to smack him, but he was nearly two heads taller than her, so he leaned back, neck snapping back towards the courthouse doors, expecting security to be honing in on them any moment, and made a beeline for the cab he had called ten minutes ago that was finally pulling up to the curb.

“Faggot,” she muttered it, but loudly enough so that even the small crowd of people that had gathered widened their eyes. His head turned a degree, two-

It was his turn to invade her space. He bullrushed her, her jaw dropping so quickly a line of spit connected her lips, tripping over the sidewalk, and put his face inches from her to whisper.

Those words he had told Jesse, ‘there’s nothing wrong with you,’ was always something he had been doubtful of, having been raised Catholic, having been told it was a sin all his life. It was only now, this woman telling him he was wrong, his son was wrong, that he really believed it. There was nothing wrong with him.

“If you, or your dumb fucking husband ever come near me, or my family, or try to contact us in any way, I’ll kill you. I’ll smash your skull into the pavement. Got it?” He was so quiet nobody else could hear them, but felt her nod, and backed away, smiling pleasantly at all the people watching, snatched up the papers still sitting patiently for him on the bench, then lowered himself into the cab, leaving Nancy McCree standing there, dumbstruck into silence.

 

Jack was pulling out a bag of popcorn from the microwave when Gabe shut the door behind him. He beamed.

“I saw Jeff in the hall just a sec ago! Told me everything went great but you decided to stick around. Everything okay?” 

Gabe had pulled his jacket off, let it drop on the floor, his white shirt halfway unbuttoned now. He got to Jack in two steps, blood pounding in his ears, a thumb underneath Jack's jaw, and pulled him up into a kiss, Jack so surprised he didn’t even move his lips for a few seconds, then-

His lips parted in surprise, Gabe could feel his smile go slack when his tongue entered Jack’s mouth, then Jack was unbuttoning the rest of Gabe’s shirt, pulling his tie closer to him so Gabe was crowding all of his space.

Jack’s face always had dustings of hair on it, and since he had the last three days off, it had turned into a deep shadow, Gabe pressing heavy kisses into it, his farmboy, skin sweet and warm syrup, Overwatch’s leader turned into putty, giggling nervously as Gabe backed him up into their kitchenette.

“What’s gotten into you?” He stammered, but Gabe was pulling Jack’s t-shirt over his head now, feeling his heart going kitten fast under his calloused fingertips.

He always hated going to mass as a kid, all that kneeling and standing and looming around in candle lit rooms, rosary beads limp in his hands, ashes pressed into his forehead.

Now, he savored falling to his knees, taking Jack’s cock in his mouth, swallowing his come like sacramental wine, the sweat from his stomach pressed into Gabe’s forehead like it was a cross for lent. To be here, with him, to spread him wide and fuck him on their bed, all those ‘ _ Oh God’s,’ _ their hands intertwined together, was a more profound spiritual experience than Gabe had ever felt in all of those hours in church.

Hours later, he drew them a bath, baptized by the rose scented waters, pressing his slick torso against Jack’s, thoughts he couldn’t put into words sloshing around the edges of the tub and up over the edge, extinguishing the candles Jack had labored over lighting.

“You’re a sap,” Gabe said, eyes shut, Jack making a noise of annoyance when a few more candles were snuffed out from Gabe stretching his feet.

“You love me,” Jack said, fishing around and relighting the candles.

“I love you,” Gabe said, pulling on Jack’s hand, telling him wordlessly to forget about the candles, to be still for once, just the two of them here, miraculously still alive after all these years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello. I am back after like seven months... Why am I like this. ANYWAY I never watched sense8 but that one scene between lito and hernando was obviously hugely inspirational for the ending of this chapter.


	9. Jesse McCree, present day

**Jesse McCree, present day**

 

The rest of the drive was uneventful bouts of traffic and billboard after billboard of fast food restaurants and adult toy shops. Somewhere north of DC, Sombra asked if she could listen to something to stop from herself dying of boredom, and McCree hummed a noise of assent before continuing to stare out the window, watching the view turn from packed cities to suburbs to great wastelands of gas stations and towering green road signs and back again.

It was a small comfort when it was turn to drive just short of New York, them switching seats parked next to a field of inch deep water and tall grass, that very distinct New Jersey smell (something Jack had called “the bogs” when they had landed in Newark once for a UN conference) seeping through the air filters.

“I’ve never been,” Sombra finally admitted once the great lights of the city started to glimmer on the horizon.

“It’s too crowded,” was all McCree offered.

“You like the southwest then?” Her whole body was turned towards him now, feet curled under her legs.

“I like any place where liquor is cheap and there ain’t a whole lot of people to see me. Bounty, and all.” He grimaced.

“What if you had no bounty and a lot of money? Where would you go?” She was keen for an answer, he could tell, her eyes puppy round and body humming with energy.

He thought for a few minutes before answering, streetlights flickering into the car every couple of seconds, other cars flying past him, but he was in no rush.

McCree thought of a time where Commander Reyes had gone out of town for a weekend with Jack, and had asked McCree to hull the boat out of the water, get it up on a sandbar and clean the underside of it and get her tied back up by Sunday. If he could manage, there was a hundred dollars in it for him. And to McCree, who got his bi monthly paycheck from Blackwatch- which was plenty to get by on for somebody who had always been a free lunch boy. Just a crooked slice of American cheese between two slices of white bread was all he had to eat some days- it really didn’t matter if he got the hundred or not, but he accepted anyway.

The winds had been especially strong that spring, McCree choosing to leave his hat at home, putting his old glasses on to avoid sand getting kicked up into his eyes, tipping the boat three-quarters onto its side, tying ropes around those fat conifer tree trunks, the sand burning the soles of his feet while he shucked barnacles off with a putty knife. It had been lonely work, McCree thinking,  _ I wish I had somebody to do this with. _

“I don’t know. Close to the water, I guess.” He thumbed the steering wheel, his left foot going numb.

“I’d like to live within walking distance to a bakery. The smell of roasted coffee in the morning air works just as well as drinking it, I think,” her eyes glossed over, and McCree was nice enough  _ not _ to tell her most coffee was made by omnics in bland beige factories throughout the midwest these days. She’d be hard pressed to find a place that put much work into anything.

They rolled into a university parking lot deep underground, Sombra shuffling through her glove compartment until she found a parking tag with big purple letters asserting that she had the right to park here.

“Good one,” McCree offered, biting back a grin.

“I try,” she said.

It was late, late enough for most of the tourists to have tucked themselves into their hotel rooms, but not late enough for McCree, as there still giant pools of people fresh out of college, in outfits they thought were stylish in New York, all milling about, cell phones pressed between their shoulders and ears, loud and warm, body heat turning their hair frizzy.

Sombra walked in a straight line, squeezing between everyone deftly, McCree muttering ‘excuse me’ and ‘pardon’ a dozen times over before giving it up.

They entered a bar, its red exterior turned pink underneath street lights, and before McCree could even make a beeline for the bar, he heard his first named being called.

“Jesse! Jesse over here!” And through the crowd, wearing a baggy black shirt and low waisted jeans, Genji was waving at the pair of them, his brother standing a few feet behind him, looking horribly out of place in an expensive looking suit, one arm folded under his armpit, the other holding a glass he was peering into, suspect of whatever the contents were.

Without invitation, McCree’s shoulders were being squeezed by Genji’s hands, the prosthetic cool to the touch through McCree’s shirt.

“I am so glad you’re here!” He bellowed, smile a little wobbly, his liquor warm breath heating the tip of McCree’s nose. Before he could even begin to think of anything to say, Sombra had asserted herself between them.

“Let’s get you some water! We still have work to do!” Her voice didn’t carry out of their circle, but she pulled her jacket back an inch, revealing a few datapads of varying brands. Nodding vaguely, Genji let himself be steered towards the bar by Sombra, leaving McCree standing across from Hanzo, like two kids forced to mingle on a playdate.

“What are you drinking? Is it any good?” McCree yelled over the crowd, getting shoved a little by a group of very tipsy girls. And they were  _ girls _ . Not one person in this bar save for the four of them could have been over twenty five.

“I paid fifteen dollars for a warm drink of watered down gin. You tell me,” Hanzo replied, then let his head turn towards Sombra and Genji, pressed knee to knee in a half circle booth. “It would probably be best not to keep them waiting.”

Too tired to do more than grumble that he’d really like a drink, McCree followed a few feet behind him, sitting next to Sombra while Hanzo sat on Genji’s other side while they talked about what exact documents to ask for, who to ask for, what to say, what not to say.

Three days this went on, them meeting at the bar, so Genji could slide of datapads towards Sombra under their purple leather booth seats, Sombra and McCree sleeping in until noon, him watching tv while she flipped through page after page.

“How exactly are you payin’ for all of this?” He asked on their third day of room service burgers, determinedly watching a camp classic as to not let his eyes linger towards the mountain of papers on her bed.

“Sugar daddy.” She said flatly, but when he turned around to give her a ‘are you shitting me’ sorta look, she was smiling.

“Just an interested party, financing all of this,” she waved her hands around their room. “But I really can’t do much to verify a lot of these claims.. If you could just..” And she ruffled a few pieces of paper in his general direction. 

“No,” was his only response, turning back towards the tv. He heard a humph from Sombra, then all went quiet for a few minutes, save for the flipping of paper and the low rumble from the television.

“Didn’t know Genji and Hanzo were on speaking terms,” McCree said, trying to sound casual. “Didn’t think that was something you moved past.”

Sombra actually laughed.

“Yeah, well, they give a whole new definition to ‘fucked up family.’ Present company excluded,” she added, waving a manilla folder. “You should see the hotel they’re cooped up in.” McCree raised an eyebrow. “I’m just saying, if I had a brother that loaded, I’d probably be willing to forgive him for chucking me off the side of a cliff, too.”

“That’s the only reason they’re talking? So Genji can afford some- _ some luxuries _ ?” McCree said indignantly, louder than he had anticipated, so the neighboring wall thumped twice.

“Oh no, I’m sure he’s seen the light and is all zen or whatever, it’s just an added bonus.” Sombra shrugged.

“And what about his brother? Is he just peachy keen buying his way to redemption?” He wanted to let it go, he really did, but something just made him keep talking. He’d be hard pressed to forgive something like that.

Finally, Sombra lifted her eyes and met his gaze.

“I’m really trying to work here, so I’ll tell you this once. I had a contact reach out to me.. About reaching out to Hanzo. I contacted Genji, suggesting that he reach his brother before I did. From what Genji told me, it took a-” she pulled on her top lip with her teeth to stop herself from grinning. “-A few tries for Hanzo to accept that it really was Genji, and that Genji really wanted to help his brother from falling into more-  _ moral debt,  _ let’s call it. I guess he finally came around. I don’t think they’ll ever be close, but, who knows. Stranger things have happened.”

That night at the bar, McCree watched Hanzo with a more keen eye, instead of letting himself daydream or watch the crowd dance with a slack-jawed look on his face.

What was surprising was that Hanzo was watching him back. Every time McCree would let his eyes linger on the corner of Hanzo’s mouth turning slightly at a bad joke Sombra had told, or scrunch his nose at the beginning of a particularly bad song, he’d catch McCree’s eye, just for a moment. And McCree couldn’t help it, he actually grinned to himself when he turned his head towards the door and could feel those eyes watching him, because damn, this guy was gorgeous.

He excused himself, shaking his empty drink in indication that he was getting another, Sombra and Genji barely acknowledging the whoosh of the cushions inflating from McCree standing up so quickly. Halfway towards the bar, an assertive finger was pressed into the middle of his back, pushing him towards the door, McCree overwhelmed enough by the touch he let himself be guided out into the night, the cityscape so smoggy the sky was a cloudy green. Turning around, he saw Hanzo looking up at him, head cocked slightly, trying to figure him out, as if they had both decided to make a study of each other.

“Hey.”

“You can finish mine.” Hanzo offered, holding up his half finished gin and tonic before McCree could say more. They stood inches across from each other, people shuffling past them, completely unaware of the tense energy between the pair.

“Thanks,” McCree said, suddenly unable to look at him.

To his surprise, Hanzo pulled out a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket, raising his eyebrows in offer.

“Thanks,” McCree repeated, feeling stupid, completely out of his element. Small fish in a big pond, or whatever. In those big plains full of tiny cities he was a stud- here? He was a nobody.

They smoked in silence, McCree sipping on the most expensive mixed drink he had ever drank, (and not even paid for himself) trying to savor it as much as one could.

This continued for three nights, Genji and Sombra hustling into their corner, sipping shots between datapads until they were drunk enough to believe that they were very good singers and dancers, leaving Jesse and Hanzo to stare at their shoes and smoke on the balcony while smooth faced twenty somethings streamed in and out of the door, pockets of bass heavy music escaping bursting out every twenty seconds or so.

McCree had caved, gotten the special of the night, only to avoid paying more than ten dollars for a drink, when Hanzo peered into his cup, one taut arm leaning into McCree actually causing McCree’s stomach to curl into a ball, wrinkling his nose.

“Yeah well, nothing says New York in July like a mai tai,” he smirked, and Hanzo’s mouth twisted, trying to suppress a grin, then quickly looked at his feet.

“You want to go?” Hanzo asked suddenly, head jerking up to look out at the mass expanse of skyscrapers.

McCree’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. Surely this was a joke, this guy’s first joke. A weird one, sure, but there was no actual way he was getting prepositioned by somebody who looked like this?

“ _ Goooo? _ ” He answered slowly, not wanting to fall for whatever cruel prank Hanzo was playing on him.

“To go eat?” Hanzo folded his arms, feet wide apart, toe tapping.

“Oh. Oh! Well sure, anything you want specifically?”

And they were off, McCree taking short steps as to not lose Hanzo, the flat of his palm pushing into McCree's back as a sea of people all started pouring out of one street, hooting and burping, turning the air sour with the smell of skunky beer.

“Wonder what the occasion is?” McCree hollered, noticing Hanzo's spare hand was buried just as deeply in his pockets as McCree’s were, and felt a surge of affection towards him that had nothing to do with the two drinks sitting low in his belly.

“Game,” Hanzo answered, eyes looking straight forward.

Suddenly, he took the crook of McCree’s jacket, and pulled him down a flight of stairs, McCree foolishly thinking he was about to be kissed, when the door to a pizza parlor flung open, the sweet smell of tomatoes, wet air conditioning sticking to his skin, and dingy fluorescents flooding McCree’s senses.

He blinked a few times, trying to adjust himself to the situation, going so differently from what he had been expecting.

“Have you never ate pizza before?” Hanzo called over his shoulder, sounding vaguely impatient.

“Not in a long time, besides some made by a very small Roman Emperor,” McCree said, recovering quickly. It got him a begrudging smile, at least.

While Hanzo ordered, McCree perused the dingy little place. There was a rack of tourist sites brochures against a finger smudged wall, Niagara Falls and Rockefeller and even a few from neighboring states. McCree thumbed through the one labelled Massachusetts, thought about asking Hanzo how he’d like to go camp for a night, drive up to Salem and get swept away by a kitschy ghost tour, trying to find something actually interesting to do, far away from the overwhelming crowds in New York- when he saw it.

Walden Pond State Reservation.

His eyes narrowed, then widened with the realization, just in time for Hanzo to nudge him in the arm with a wobbly paper plate.

“Do you want to go- I dunno, up north a little bit? Get away from all these people for a day or two?” He realized how it must’ve sounded, but it garnered no look of displeasure from Hanzo, just a raise of the brows and a curve of the lip, McCree feeling heat surge up his neck. He chewed his upper lip for a moment, then gave a half shrug.

“Should be better than another night of listening to Genji attempt karaoke, I suppose.”


End file.
